Apache should tap into the shared-mime-info database

[Delan Azabani]

Apache has its own small MIME database, however it is quite limited. Apache would benefit from sending files as the correct MIME type based on the information searched in the shared-mime-info database, which contains many more type definitions, as well as the facility for magic/namespace detection.

[Mathias Gug (mathiaz)]

According to the configuration of the mime module the default apache2 configuration is already using /etc/mime.types:

  #
  # TypesConfig points to the file containing the list of mappings from
 # filename extension to MIME-type.
 #
 TypesConfig /etc/mime.types

The mime-support handles /etc/mime.types. So apache2 is already using the system mime type database.

[Delan Azabani (azabani)]

I believe you are wrong. /etc/mime.types is not the shared-mime-info database I am talking about. I am aware that Apache uses /etc/mime.types, which only has extension globbing, but no magic or namespace detection. The shared-mime-info database is cascaded in the following three directories (only the first two are necessary for Apache):

/usr/share/mime
/usr/local/share/mime
/home/*/.local/share/mime

[Stefan Fritsch (sf-sfritsch)]

About magic:

Apache's mod_mime_magic does not support all features that are used in /usr/share/mime/magic. Using that file would result in error messages. And from a quick glance at libmagic, it doesn't seem possible to use it in mod_mime_magic either because it is not thread safe. Therefore apache brings its own magic file.