Help is never far away!

It's easy to make mistakes with the software tools that you'll find on this web server. Bugs that you introduce may range from minor brainteasers to catastrophic problems that disrupt the work of everybody else who's using the system.

Log Files

You can help yourself by learning how to interpret log files, which provide useful debugging information. We've configured cheshire to record most Apache httpd and PHP errors in the web server error log file. You can find our Apache access and error log files here:

/var/log/httpd/httpd-access_log
/var/log/httpd/httpd-error_log

To watch errors as they appear in realtime, try this command:

[cheshire] % tail -f /var/log/httpd/httpd-error_log

Monitoring

The CSE IT staff also keeps an eye on the system. If we identify somebody's site as causing problems such as severe system loads, we will cut off their access to their website by locking down their public_html directory access permissions and then contacting them to fix the problems. This modification will make that website inaccessible from both the student and departmental web servers until the owner fixes the problem. If we suspect that a web site is causing problems, we may inspect the contents of the offending public_html directory to attempt to identify the problem.

Ask for Help

• If you're developing web content as part of a CSE course, begin by asking your question to your instructor or TAs.
• You can always email cse-consult for help, and the CSE IT staff will respond to you shortly. Your email will automatically submit a ticket to our project queue.
• You can also email cse-webmaster. The CSE IT staff also receives this mail, but this email alias doesn't automatically submit a ticket to our project queue.