If the home page on my domain in named index.html everything works fine. If I change the name to index.htm (which I usually like to use) I get an Apache test page telling me to transfer everything under /home/httpd to /var/www. I know I don't want to do this but the other server I have both index.html and index.htm work as home pages. The one that works has RH 7.3 and the one that doesn't work has RH 9. Both have Plesk 6.0.1. Any ideas. I know it isn't a big issue but I like to keep everything uniform.

Check in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf the directive
DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm....
You should add all the files you want to serve as indexes.

I am just curious, do you have to change the directoryindex in all the files in the /etc/httpd/conf directory (including the ones with extension saved_by ... or just the httpd.conf itself -- hard to tell but it may read them all in.

just httpd.conf, the others are backups etc made by other programs

HOwever, apache is very strange about reading backup files -- if I edit a file and use emacs to save it, apache will read the backup file as well as the original -- that is why I asked the question.