Apache Test Page

[vwgtiturbo]

I am going nuts here, trying to figure this out...
I have a WinXP hard drive, a Red Hat 9 hard drive, and a third drive for a webserver. Both OS's are setup so that Apache 2 runs and will serve the files. HOWEVER, when I am running RH9, if I try to go to "localhost" or my IP, and DON'T have an index file, it displays the Apache test page. If I DO have an idex file, everything works great. So my question is... If I don't have an index file (I have one, but I rename it so I can see a directory listing instead), how can I make Apache display the directory contents, instead of the generic test page. I can't even find where that damn test page is hiding... Thanks!

[gaxprels]

The file is index.html located in your htdocs directory (where you put your other files.) This file has to be delete/replaced. If it doesn't exist it may be defaulting to the other index.html.en or index.en.html language specific files. In which case they will need to be deleted as well. If you want to "list directory contents" when an index.html file doesn't exist for that directory, you'll need to make a change in your httpd.conf or apache.conf (system dependant) possibly. Some systems have that turned off by default for security reasons.

The config file is usually located at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf on RH systems.

[vwgtiturbo]

That is what I thought too. Here is the kicker...

I have httpd.conf set up correctly, meaning that the server root and document root work. However, I don't have an 'htdocs' directory. Insane, huh? I mean, I do have one, only because of the Windows installation of Apache on the webserver hard drive, but no 'htdocs' as far as the Linux system.

I have the server root as /etc/httpd, since that is where the modules and such are, then I have the document root as /webserver/Apache2/htdocs/. I think it is a problem because /webserver is a mounted hard drive that I have Apache 2 installed on when I run Windows. I installed Apache as part of the RH9 install, and just set the docroot to use the mounted HD that is shared with Windows (that way, no matter what OS I boot in, the server is running, as I have Apache installed on both OSs).

I just can't figure out why, if I don't have an index file, it defaults to some file I can't find (the test page), but if I do have an index, it opens correctly. It goes to the server root to look for an index file, as it should, but if it doesn't find one, it brings up the test page instead of a directory listing. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the test page is not in my document root, so somehow it knows to search elsewhere if no index is present. I am confused...

I would just rather see a directory listing instead of the test page, you know? Insanity... I am in the process of pouring through the .conf file right now, and I can't find anything that should be causing this problem...

[vwgtiturbo]

Nevermind... after trying out some different scenarios, it seems that it only does this on the DocumentRoot directory. If any other directory in the tree doesn't have an index file, it shows the listing, as I wanted. Only if the DocumentRoot doesn't have one, does it decide to show that test page...