The Apache HTTP web server is one of the most used web server worldwide. On Ubuntu you can install the Apache HTTP server with the following command. The Apache HTTP Server Project is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows. The goal of this project is to provide a secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards.
This tutorial explains about Apache HTTP Server( Apache Web Server) Installation. Let us learn about what Apache HTTP Server is and how to install and configure it on a Linux Machine.
The Apache HTTP Server Project is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows. The Apache web server is easy to install. With one command, you can install it and all necessary dependencies: $ dnf install httpd. All the configuration files for Apache are located in /etc/httpd/conf and /etc/httpd/conf.d. The data for websites you'll run with Apache is located in /var/www by default, but you can change that if you want.
Apache http Server
Apache is a very well known open-source Web Server. It is not only popular but also very old Web Server. Like any other Web Servers, Apache also accepts requests from the clients, search for the requested queries and then send the response back to them.
Also Read : How to install Anaconda on Linux
&& Install Redis on Linux from source
Apache HTTP Server Installation
Step 1- Update your Linux Box
$ yum update -y
Step 2- Install Apache Web Server
$ yum install httpd -y
Step 3- Start httpd service
$ service httpd start
Step 5- check the httpd service status
$ service httpd status
Step 6- Run chkconfig command to run the httpd service automatically after a system reboot
$ chkconfig httpd on
Step 7- To browse website from the Internet, open port 80 for http and 443 for https in your Server firewall , Network Firewall and Security Group (If using AWS or any other cloud service)
Now your Apache-Server is installed and ready.
Configuring Apache HTTP Server
Let us understand the ApacheHtTTPServer step by step from basic to advanced.
As soon as your installation is done and port is opened in the security group, without doing any configuration change just enter the public IP in the web browser of any computer. You will see the default page as shown below.
To access the server from your domain name, create A record for your web server in your DNS zone configuration.If you are not managing your DNS Server please take help of your DNS team/IT Team to do so.
I have created A record for my domain as follows:
devopsmyway.in ————–> IP Address of my Server.
Now I can browse the Apache Web Server from my domain name i.e devopsmyway.in. The same test page will come as I did not change any configuration yet.
Basic Configuration of Apache HTTP Server
Let’s do some basic changes to open your Web Server (Web Site) as per your configuration.
Create an index.html file in “/var/www/html” directory and write some content in this to serve in the web browser. I am using echo command here to create and write content in index.html.
$ echo “Hello , Welcome to Devopsmyway.in ” > /var/www/html/index.html
As soon as you create and write content in index.html file in Document Directory“/var/www/html” your website will start serving the content written in index.html.
Now we have done the basic configuration of Apache Web Server. Let us move ahead and learn some advanced settings.
Virtual Host
Virtual host comes into picture when you want to host multiple Websites on a Single Server. Virtual host are of two types:
- Name-based virtual host
- IP based virtual host
Name-based Virtual Host
Name-based Virtual Host is used to configure multiple websites on a Single Server having a single IP Address. To configure Name-based Virtual hosts we need to do configuration changes in Apache Configuration file.
Apache Configuration file : /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Apache Http Server Latest Version
Let us configure two websites www.devopsmyway.in and www.devopsmyway.net on the same Server with same IP address. To do so , open /etc/http/conf/httpd.conf and add the following lines at the bottom of the file.
$ vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
<VirtualHost 172.31.22.60:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/devopsmyway.in
ServerName www.devopsmyway.in
ErrorLog logs/www.devopsmywa.in-error_log
CustomLog logs/www.devopsmyway.in-access_log common
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost 172.31.22.60:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/devopsmyway.net
ServerName www.devopsmyway.net
ErrorLog logs/www.devopsmyway.net-error_log
CustomLog logs/www.devopsmyway.net-access_log common
</VirtualHost>
Now Create to Directories as follows:
$ mkdir -p /var/www/html/devopmyway.net
$ mkdir -p /var/www/html/devopmyway.in
Create index.html file in each folder and add some content in it.
$ echo “Hello , Welcome to Devopsmyway.in ” > /var/www/html/devopsmyway.in/index.html
$ echo “Hello , Welcome to Devopsmyway.net ” > /var/www/html/devopsmyway.net/index.html
Now check the configuration and restart the httpd service
$ httpd -t
$ service httpd restart
Note: If you donot have two websites in Public DNS , you can do host entry in /etc/hosts on the same server as follows for testing
Now you will able to browse both the URL.
IP based virtual host
IP bases virtual host is used to configure multiple websites on a Single Server with multiple IP Addresses. To configure IP-based Virtual hosts we need to do the following configuration changes in the Apache configuration file.
Let us configure two websites www.devopsmyway.in and www.devopsmyway.net on the same Server on two IP addresses. To do so , open /etc/http/conf/httpd.conf and add the following lines at the bottom of the file.
<VirtualHost 172.31.22.60:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/devopsmyway.in
ServerName www.devopsmyway.in
ErrorLog logs/www.devopsmywa.in-error_log
CustomLog logs/www.devopsmyway.in-access_log common
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost 172.31.27.122:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/devopsmyway.net
ServerName www.devopsmyway.net
ErrorLog logs/www.devopsmyway.net-error_log
CustomLog logs/www.devopsmyway.net-access_log common
</VirtualHost>
Again check your configuration, restart the httpd service and browse both the sites using the curl command.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned to launch Apache http Server on AWS . If you think this is really helpful, please do share my website https://devopsmyway.com to others as well. I will continue for the tutorial for Apache in my next blog. Also, please give your valuable feedback in the comment box.
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Apache HTTP server
The Apache HTTP Server, an open-source web server developed by the Apache Software Foundation. The Apache server is used to host web content. It responds to requests for content from web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Installing Apache
Apache Http Server Eol
To configure your system as a web server, begin by installing the httpd software package.
Use the systemctl utility to enable the HTTP daemon to start at boot time and also to start the daemon immediately.
Configuration files
The main configuration file for Apache is /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. An auxiliary directory, /etc/httpd/conf.d, also exists to store configuration files that are included in the main configuration file. Configuration files that load modules are in the /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d directory.
New apachectl subcommands in CentOS / RHEL 7
A new apachectl sub-commands are available in CentOS / RHEL 7. The following example uses the configtest subcommand to check the configuration for possible errors.
Use the graceful subcommand to reload the configuration without affecting active requests.
Configuring Apache
The main configuration file for Apache is /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. Apache runs as installed, but you can modify configuration directives in this file to customize Apache for your environment. Some of these directives are described in the post below.
Testing Apache HTTP server
You can confirm that Apache is working by pointing a browser on the local system to http://localhost as shown in the picture below. You can also point a browser to http:// followed by the IP Public address of the server or the ServerName directive that you specified in the configuration file. The test page shown below confirms the functioning Apache HTTP server.
To test the display of actual content, create an HTML file named index.html in the directory specified by the DocumentRoot directive (the default directory is /var/www/html). Apache automatically displays the index.html file in this directory, if it exists.
Apache Containers
Apache Http Server Byte Range Dos
Apache containers are special configuration directives that group other directives. The containers use XML-style tags, meaning that the beginning of a container is <name> and the end is </name>. An index of all the container directives is available at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/sections.html. Refer the post below to get the most commonly used apache containers.
Apache Virtual Hosts
Apache supports virtual hosts, meaning that a single Apache server can respond to requests directed to multiple IP addresses or host names. Each virtual host can provide content and be configured differently.
You can configure virtual hosts in two ways:
1. IP-based Virtual Hosts (host-by-IP)
2. Name-based Virtual Hosts (host-by-name)
Apache Http Server Tutorial
host-by-IP
With host-by-IP, each virtual host has its own IP address and port combination. The Apache web server responds to the IP address that the host resolves as. Host-by-IP is required for serving HTTPS requests due to restrictions in the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol.
host-by-name
With host-by-name, all virtual hosts share the common IP address. Apache responds to the request by mapping the host name in the request to ServerName and ServerAlias directives in the particular virtual host’s configuration file.
Use the <VirtualHost host-name> container to implement virtual hosts. After the first VirtualHost is defined, all of the content served by Apache must also be moved into virtual hosts.
Apache Http Server Download
The following example is a simple name-based virtual hosts configuration: