apache .gz gzip content handler for Linux documentation /usr/share/doc and localhost/doc/

Question

How could I create a simple content handler for apache .gz gzip content. I want it to uncompress say http://localhost/doc/FAQ/Linux-FAQ.gz and send it to the browser as plain text. There is a lot of documentation for Linux in /usr/share/doc and localhost/doc/. I don't want to use zless, zcat or vim to read the content. I use apache to browse the documentation on my local machine and have my web browser revive it as standard text so that it does not ask me to download the *.gz file every time.

Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
Alias local.doc "/usr/share/doc/"
<Directory "/usr/share/doc/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
</Directory>

But Now I want all those .gz file under /usr/share/doc/ to be servered as plain text. I think I could do that very simply with a python script in cgi-bin. I am looking for a nice content handler for those files. Like the way it php files are handled .gz should be uncompressed and sent to the browser.

<IfModule mod_php5.c>
  AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml .php3
  AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
</IfModule>
LoadModule php5_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so

I see there is a mod_deflate, how would this apply. Could this handle the gzip content.

It would make browsing documentation so much easier. Any programing resources to help here would be nice.

Answer 1

I've used something like this before for js/css files (I modified the below to match your needs). Add this to your virtualhost entry:

Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
Alias local.doc "/usr/share/doc/"
<Directory /usr/share/doc>
    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128

    AddEncoding gzip gz
    <FilesMatch "\.gz$">
      ForceType text/plain
      Header set Content-Encoding: gzip
    </FilesMatch>
</Directory>

Updated above to match your code

In ubuntu ensure that Headers module is enabled

$ sudo a2enmod headers  
$ sudo a2enmod deflate
$ sudo apache2ctl restart

Update2: Realized that "AddEncoding gzip gz" was missing.. otherwise, file kept trying to download.

Update3: Added apache module deflate install command. Here's my deflate.conf:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
      # these are known to be safe with MSIE 6
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml

      # everything else may cause problems with MSIE 6
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript application/javascript application/ecmascript
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
</IfModule>

You could first try with some other type of file (e.g. a css file). Example:

cd /usr/share/doc
cat ".styles { width: 50px; }" > test.css
gzip -c test.css > test.css.gz

Add this to your virtualhost:

    <FilesMatch "\.css\.gz$">
        ForceType text/css
        Header set Content-Encoding: gzip
    </FilesMatch>

Test http://127.0.0.1/doc/test.css and http://127.0.0.1/doc/test.css.gz and see what result you get.