Greetings. I have a standard Apache 2 install that I compiled and installed on a new RHEL box. Things were working fine, but I noticed that the box has become very slow.

When I go to the command line from another box on the network and issue a 'wget http://192.168.1.100/index.html', it sits there for a while with a "HTTP request sent, awaiting response..." message. When I send the request to another box with the same configuration on the same network, the response is lightening fast.

Once I get the response, the file downloads in no time.

Any ideas where I can begin looking?

I know that the Leopard firewall is rather restrictive and difficult to manage in a granular manner. What are some good reference materials out there that will allow me to open up file sharing on Leopard but still maintain file security over a network? I need to share web content with a small web group.

I have several sub folders on my apache web server that I manage. I am looking for a way to define user groups so I can manage access to those web servers. I really do not want to invest in a big-ass identity control management app. I want to use htaccess and something simple. However, I would like to have the system manageable such that if a user leaves, I can simply remove his/her account from the server and not have to disrupt the other users.

Needs:
(1) Different users need access to different folders on the server
(2) Each user has his/her own login/pass

Ideally, I would like to define groups, and have anyone within those groups have access to the intranet

e.g. "development", "contractors", "testers", etc.

What is an easy way to do this?

What services should one use to insure that a site is actually running as desired? What are the things I should be checking for to make sure my web application is actually running? I have the system health-check sent over daily, but what can I do to make sure my application is available. I know there are services out there. Any ideas of what the options are? I have an apache app, running on mysql and php.

I am looking for a tool to allow me to find out the response headers that are being sent back from my server. I am thinking of writing a script that makes an HTTP request, but I don't want to do cookie management, etc to get to sections of my site that require me to login. What tools can I use that will dump the http headers and show me a request/response trail for my web app? The web app is running on apache and is written in python.