• httpd is the hyper text transfer protocol daemon
  • it runs on the server, and it can run on any unix system
  • the daemon runs continually, listening (port 80) for requests
  • requests come from browsers, primarily, for documents of particular types
  • the mime.types configuration file tells the daemon how to interpret the data in the files it gets
  • in most cases, the daemon relies on the file name sufix (eg .gif) to tell it what the file type is
  • files are sent in parts, and connections with remote clients are verified until the whole file arrives (and is reassembled)
  • the httpd.conf file holds variables pertinent to the running of the daemon
  • there's lots more info about apache (the sub-species of httpd we're using) on their web site
  • there are several logs that you can "cat" to see what is going on here, such as /etc/httpd/logs/access_log and /etc/httpd/logs/error_log