What is Cherokee ?

Cherokee HTTP Server is a cross-platform Web server. It aims to be fast and fully-functional while remaining lightweight compared to alternative servers. It is written entirely in C. It is embeddable and extensible with plugins

Cherokee was started in 2001 by Alvaro López Ortega. The motivation was to build a new web server; something newer than NCSA HTTPd and not as big and heavy as Apache HTTP Server, both of which are now more than 15 years old. Currently, Cherokee is developed and maintained by an open community of developers.

Requirement

http://www.cherokee-project.com/doc/basics_requirements.html

My System Specs

• openSUSE 11.0 (i586)

Setup

In this tutorial i will use yast to install cherokee because i believe it’s faster and easier. Okay let’s start.

1. Go to your yast2 control center

# yast2

because by default opensuse repository did not have cherokee project we need to add it first, go to your yast control center -> software -> software repositories -> add -> pick specify url -> then add http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/server:/http/openSUSE_11.0/

You will see on your repository it has been added

you will get prompt for gnu public key agreement, just pick import

2. Install the cherokee from yast

Go to your yast control center -> software -> software management -> filter -> search -> type cherokee -> search -> pick cherokee -> next

you will get prompt for dependencies, just click ok

The cheroke should be installed now

# # rpm -qa | grep -i cherokee
libcherokee-base0-0.98.1-4.1
libcherokee-client0-0.98.1-4.1
cherokee-0.98.1-4.1
libcherokee-server0-0.98.1-4.1
libcherokee-config0-0.98.1-4.1

now we need to add the service on start up

# chkconfig --level 235 cherokee on

now we can start the cherokee

# /etc/init.d/cherokee start
Starting cherokee                                                    done
# Cherokee Web Server 0.98.1 (Feb  3 2009): Listening on ports ALL:80,
ALL:443(TLS), TLS disabled, IPv6 disabled, using epoll, 1024 fds system
limit, max. 505 connections, caching I/O, 20 threads, 25 connections per
thread, standard scheduling policy

Now direct your browser to http://192.168.0.100, and you should see the Cherokee placeholder page:


Cherokee can be configured through a web-based control panel which we can start as follows:

cherokee-admin -b

(By default cherokee-admin binds only to 127.0.0.1 (localhost), which means you can only connect to it from the same system. With the -b parameter you can specify the network address to listen to. If no IP is provided, it will bind to all interfaces.)

but before we enable the cherokee-admin you need to install cherkoeeadmin dependencies which is python.

# yast2 –install python

or you will get this when you enter the admin area

553 service unavailable

After you isntall the dependencies the Output should be similar to this one:

# cherokee-admin -b

Login:
User:              admin
One-time Password: Jk7h3gBoxRfhWjJa

Cherokee Web Server 0.98.1 (Feb  3 2009): Listening on port ALL:9090, TLS
disabled, IPv6 disabled, using epoll, 1024 fds system limit, max. 505
connections, caching I/O, single thread

You need the username and password to log into the web interface which can be found on http://192.168.0.100:9090/:

Another common cherokee error was the Server status  Server is not running. cherokee

it because you need to run cherooke as root go to cherokee admin -> general-> server permission
http://192.168.0.100:9090/general
changes the user and group from cherokee to root

3. Installing PHP5

We can make PHP5 work in Cherokee through FastCGI. Therefore we install the package php5-fastcgi

# yast2 –install php5-fastcgi

Now you need to modify the php.ini

# vi /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1

Then we restart Cherokee:

# /etc/init.d/cherokee restart

4.  Enabling PHP5 In Cherokee

on your default virtual server the php was added automaticaly but if you want to create another virtual server you need to add php manually

Now if you want to add another virtual server you must add the php service on it

you need to Add new rule -> Rulte Type -> pick Extention -> Extention -> type php then you will redirected to a new page (extention .php then go to Handlrer -> pick fastcgi

Before you leave the control panel, make sure you restart Cherokee for the changes to take effect. To do so, select Graceful restart under Save Changes in the left column of the control panel and click on Save:

5. Test the php

okay for the last time go to your cherokee WWW Root /srv/www/htdocs/  and create a phpiinfo

# vi test.php

< ? phpinfo() ; ? >

then browse your site to see it http://192.168.0.100/test.php