Fedora Core provides the Apache server in the httpd package. The httpd package is included on Fedora systems installed with the Server installation type. You may have installed it later in order to run websites or Web applications. Fedora Extras also offers alternative HTTP servers, which are beyond the scope of this document.

To install the httpd package, if you have not already done so, use the following command:

su -c 'yum install httpd'

Enter the password for the root account when prompted.

To start the service, use the following command:

su -c '/sbin/service httpd start'

Enter the password for the root account when prompted.

To enable this service to load automatically at boot time, use the following command:

su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 httpd on'

Enter the password for the root account when prompted.

The default firewall configuration for Fedora blocks access from remote systems. To enable other systems to connect to your HTTP service, use the system-config-securitylevel utility:

To enable HTTP access to the files in your mirror directory, create the configuration file /etc/httpd/conf.d/mirror.conf. The following listing is an example:

# The name at which the mirror will be shared, 
# followed by the name of the root directory of that tree.
Alias /mirror /var/www/mirror

# Share options for the mirror. 
# Only allow connections from localhost and 
# IP addresses which start with 192.168.1
    <Directory /var/www/mirror>
      AllowOverride None
      Order Deny,Allow
      Deny from all
      Allow from 127.0.0.1 192.168.1
      Options Indexes
    </Directory>

You must use root privileges to create or copy files in the directory /etc/httpd/conf.d/.

To update an active httpd service with a new configuration, use the following command:

su -c '/sbin/service httpd reload'

Enter the password for the root account when prompted.

Your clients may now visit any area of your mirror by using the URL http://server.mydomain.org/mirror/path.

	Apache and SELinux
	The default SELinux configuration for Fedora permits Apache to use files in the /var/www/ directory. If you build your mirror in another directory, you may need to modify the SELinux policy.

Every RPM package has a header that contains all the vital information about that package. This information includes name, version and release, contents, the capabilities provided by the package, and any prerequisites. These prerequisites may include dependencies. A dependency is a requirement for one or more additional packages.

Packages installed without satisfying their dependencies may not work correctly. Dependencies may create a problem for users who are trying to install a single package. Manually determining and resolving dependencies is difficult. Fedora Core provides the yum utility for solving these dependencies automatically, providing an improved user experience.

The Yellow Dog Updater Modified, or yum, is a Python-based system for computing and solving RPM dependencies. A yum client retrieves a cache of headers from its repository server, as well as a list of available RPM packages and their exact locations on the server. It can do this via HTTP or FTP, as well as using standard file system calls (either local or remote via NFS). The client computes solutions to any package dependencies using the downloaded header information, and requests all necessary RPM packages once it has finished. The yum command relies on rpm functions to perform many of the computations involved in the process.

A drawback to yum is that the first time it is run, it must download a header for every package installed on the system in order to determine available updates. However, running a local mirror nullifies this drawback. The yum command can download many megabytes of headers almost instantly on a standard Ethernet LAN. The yum utility is the most popular update method for Fedora Core.

For more information about using yum, refer to http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/yum/.

A yum repository is a collection of packages on a server which supports yum clients. Repositories can serve both types of clients if desired.

To set up a yum repository, you must write a directory that contains information which the clients require to resolve RPM dependencies. The directory's name depends on the version of yum it supports. It is permissible to have both kinds of repository information in a single repository.

To support older yum clients, use the yum-arch command. To support current yum clients, use the createrepo command.

	Supporting Fedora Core 3 and beyond
	Fedora Core 3 ships with a newer version of yum. To support Fedora Core 3 yum clients, you must use createrepo on your server's repositories.

cd /var/www/mirror/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os
su -c 'yum-arch -ls .'

su -c 'createrepo /var/www/mirror/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os'

su -c 'createrepo -g Fedora/base/comps.xml /var/www/mirror/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os'