These notes cover the very basics of:
- how to set up the Apache web server
- how to restrict access to localhost
- how to install a site (for example from a static CD-ROM dump)
These notes are based on Apache/2.4.18 on a Linux-based system. They only cover static HTML-based sites. Serving dynamic sites also requires an additional application server and a database (i.e. a full LAMP stack).
!!Important!! use these notes at your own risk! I'm not an expert on neither web server nor Apache, and these are primarily for my own reference!
First update the package index:
sudo apt-get update
Then install Apache:
sudo apt-get install apache2
Configuration directory is /etc/apache2. Note that the server starts running directly after installation.
Running a web server can expose your machine to a number of security threats, so it's a good idea to restrict access to localhost only (this means that only the machine on which the server is running can access it). To do this, locate the file ports.conf in the Apache configuration directory (/etc/apache2), open it in a text editor (as sudo), and then change this line:
Listen 80
into this:
Listen 127.0.0.1:80
Save the ports.conf file, and restart the web server using:
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Type the following command:
sudo systemctl status apache2
Output should be something like this:
● apache2.service - LSB: Apache2 web server
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/apache2; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/apache2.service.d
└─apache2-systemd.conf
Active: active (running) since Tue 2018-04-10 12:40:29 CEST; 3min 21s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 7756 ExecStop=/etc/init.d/apache2 stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 5731 ExecReload=/etc/init.d/apache2 reload (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 7779 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/apache2 start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
├─7796 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
├─7799 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
└─7800 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
Apr 10 12:40:28 johan-HP-ProBook-640-G1 systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Apache2 web server...
Apr 10 12:40:28 johan-HP-ProBook-640-G1 apache2[7779]: * Starting Apache httpd web server apache2
Apr 10 12:40:28 johan-HP-ProBook-640-G1 apache2[7779]: AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
Apr 10 12:40:29 johan-HP-ProBook-640-G1 apache2[7779]: *
Apr 10 12:40:29 johan-HP-ProBook-640-G1 systemd[1]: Started LSB: Apache2 web server.
Finally open below URL in your web browser:
If all goes well this should load the Apache default page:
Adding a site involves the following steps:
- Put the site contents somewhere on the file system (by default in a subdirectory of folder
/var/www, although any directory can be used). - Create a configuration file under
/etc/apache2/sites-available - Activate the configuration file.
- Restart the server.
Create a root directory for your site under /var/www (you need sudo rights for this). For example, in below screenshot var/www contains 4 different sites:
Next copy the contents of your site into this directory. Make sure to check the file permissions for the top-level folders; for all users (Others), Folder Access must be set to Access Files. Apply these permissions to all underlying (enclosed) files as well. In the Caja file manager (Ubuntu / Linux Mint MATE desktop) this looks as follows:
Next you need to create a configuration file for the site /etc/apache2/sites-available. The easiest way to do this is to copy an existing file (typically the default 000-default.conf), and save it under a new name (e.g. nl-menu.conf). Note that you need sudo priviliges for this. Then open the newly created file in a text editor (again as sudo), and edit the value of the DocumentRoot variable, which must point to the root directory of your site. For example, if our site is located at /var/www/www.nl-menu.nl use this:
DocumentRoot /var/www/www.nl-menu.nl
Then save the file.
First disable the current configuration (in this case 8000-default.conf*):
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
Now enable the new one:
sudo a2ensite nl-menu.conf
Type this:
sudo systemctl restart apache2
All done! The newly installed site is now available at the following URL in your web browser:
