I am having some difficulty with the basic setup of apache using
O'Reilly's Apache the Definitive Guide. To my knowledge I have setup
my config to the letter and get a 404 not found error when hitting the
pages supposedly being served off of my own machine locally. 

I am running Fedora 1.0 with Apache 2.0

They suggest using a script which reads as follows:

test -d logs || mkdir logs
/usr/sbin/httpd -f `pwd`/conf/httpd$1.conf -d -`pwd`

the script is called go and was chmod'ed to 777

the path in which go lives is /usr/www/chp2

(reflecting the chapter of the book I am in)

in that direcrory there are directories : conf, htdocs, logs 

inside conf lives httpd.conf (of course) which reads:
Listen cassowary:80 #name of server is cassowary and is reflected in /etc/hosts
Servername cassowary
DocumentRoot /usr/www/chp2/htdocs
User webuser
Group webgroup

the index file living inside htdocs is in mode -rw-r-r and belongs to
the webuser group and user
so I am unclear  as to why this server is serving up 404's after apache starts.

If more clarity is needed I apologize and would be happy to make the
situation clearer.

Thank you!