I have successfully installed Apache and PHP, and gotten a vhost set up. Flat files and PHP will execute, and all include files will run when navigated directly to.

I have run

sudo a2enmod include

And this is the vhost that's in (or symlinked in) /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

# Place any notes or comments you have here
# It will make any customisation easier to understand in the weeks to come

# domain: mydomain.com
# public: /var/www/mydomain.com/

 <VirtualHost *:80>
    # Admin email, Server Name (domain name) and any aliases
    ServerAdmin mydomain@gmail.com
   ServerName  mydomain.com
   ServerAlias www.mydomain.com

   # Index file and Document Root (where the public files are located)
    DirectoryIndex index.html
    DocumentRoot /var/www/mydomain.com/httpdocs

        <Directory /var/www/mydomain.com/httpdocs>
                Options +Indexes +Includes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

        # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
        # alert, emerg.
        LogLevel warn

   ErrorLog  /var/www/mydomain.com/log/error.log
   CustomLog /var/www/mydomain.com/log/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hmm, this is crazy.

There's nothing in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf, and nothing referencing Includes in apache2.conf.

Is there anywhere else this could be getting overridden?

Well, thinking I may've made a mistake somewhere during the initial configuration, I just wiped and reinstalled my linode from scratch choosing Debian 5.0 this time. Followed the basic setup and apache install tutorials here, and I'm now back at the same place... No server side includes.




I didn't set up a separate virtual host this time.. I'm working off of the default_site vhost that was set up and working with the default Debian install. I'm just adding +Includes to appropriate directory sections. Nothing is working though.

I have run a2enmod include, and the mod appears in mods-enabled.

I'm so lost here..

Did you restart Apache after enabling the include module?

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Yep. I've rebooted the whole server.

Try adding the following lines to your virtual host configuration, just below the "options" and "allowoverride" lines.

AddType text/html .shtml
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml

Doesn't seem to have an effect.

I can't even output non file-include server side directives, like

<!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL" -->

The SSI code is not parsed, and is output in the HTML code.

whats the extention of your file?

The code that hybinet suggested only effects .shtml files..

_________________
ServerAdmin - www.our-lan.com
"Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggy whilst looking for a really big stick"
"In my experiece, any attempt to make any system idiot proof will only challenge God to make a better idiot"

some shtml, some php... but, it isn't limited to file includes. no ssi directives are being parsed.

Is there an .htaccess in the web directory, with an "Options" line? It might be overriding the Options setting in the virtualhost container and thereby disabling Includes.

There is no htaccess, I'm now working on the default-site that was installed with apache. I haven't added anything to apache2.conf or httpd.conf, and only added +Includes to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.

I'm not familiar with how Debian or Ubuntu install Apache as I install it from source. But the essential prerequisites for server sides includes are:

1. mod_include compiled in Apache:

[root@vps] cd /usr/local/apache2/bin
[root@vps] ./httpd -l | grep mod_include
  mod_include.c

Your path to the httpd binary may be different. If you don't see "mod_include.c" then it's not compiled.

2. SSI directives active:

The following lines must appear in httpd.conf (for global application -- i.e., all domains) or in a specific virtualhost:

AddType text/html .shtml
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml 

3. Option 'Includes' (or '+Includes' to merge it with existing options) for the directory where the file is being served (applies to subdirectories):

<Directory /some/path/here>
Options +Includes
</Directory>

4. An HTML file with the extension ".shtml". An example include might be:

 "<!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL" --> ".

Yay!


I didn't understand the way output filters were working. I was trying to include .shtml files into an .html file... I was adding output filters for .shtml, but I needed to add

                AddType text/html .html
                AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .html

Thanks everyone!

Good that you got it working but parsing all .html files for ssi isn't really recommended.

Read http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/howto/ssi.html

Scroll to the section "Configuring your server to permit SSI":