Category: Webservers

Set Apache To Start On Boot

October 23, 2012

By default many Apache RPM packages do not set the httpd server to start automatically on boot so this needs to be done manually. On RedHat/CentOS the chkconfig command should be used as follows:


[root@localhost]# /sbin/chkconfig --list httpd
httpd           0:off   1:off   2:off   3:off   4:off   5:off   6:off
[root@localhost]# /sbin/chkconfig --level 345 httpd on
[root@localhost]# /sbin/chkconfig --list httpd
httpd           0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

[root@localhost]# /sbin/chkconfig --list httpd

httpd 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off

[root@localhost]# /sbin/chkconfig --level 345 httpd on

[root@localhost]# /sbin/chkconfig --list httpd

httpd 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off

Apache Configuration Best Practices

October 9, 2012

There are numerous ways to organize your Apache configuration files. In some cases this organization will be dictated by your Linux distribution or control panel choice. When I’m working on RedHat/CentOS with no control panel here’s what I have found to be a good organization: Minimize changes to /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. It’s easier to upgrade or migrate if this file has few or not changes. Place virtual host definitions in /etc/httpd/conf/vhosts.conf. Put the document root for each website at /var/www/vhosts/[domain name]/httpdocs. Do not include “www” on the domain name. For example with “acme.com” the document root would be /var/www/vhosts/acme.com/httpdocs. Here’s a template for the virtual host definition:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@acme.com
    ServerName acme.com
    ServerAlias www.acme.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/acme.com/httpdocs
    ErrorLog logs/acme.com-error_log
    CustomLog logs/acme.com-access_log combined
    <Directory /var/www/vhosts/acme.com/httpdocs>
        AllowOverride All
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
   DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/acme.com/httpdocs
   ServerName acme.com
   ServerAlias www.acme.com
   ErrorLog logs/acme.com-ssl-error_log
   CustomLog logs/acme.com-ssl-access_log common
   <Directory /var/www/vhosts/acme.com/httpdocs>
       AllowOverride All
   </Directory>

   SSLEngine on
   SSLProtocol -ALL +SSLv3 +TLSv1
   SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:!LOW:!SSLv2:!EXPORT
   SSLCertificateFile /etc/pki/tls/certs/acme.com.crt
   SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/pki/tls/private/acme.com.key
   SSLCACertificateFile /etc/pki/tls/certs/gd_bundle.crt
</VirtualHost>

NameVirtualHost *:80

ServerAdmin webmaster@acme.com

ServerName acme.com

ServerAlias www.acme.com

DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/acme.com/httpdocs

ErrorLog logs/acme.com-error_log

CustomLog logs/acme.com-access_log combined

AllowOverride All

</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/acme.com/httpdocs

ServerName acme.com

ServerAlias www.acme.com

ErrorLog logs/acme.com-ssl-error_log

CustomLog logs/acme.com-ssl-access_log common

AllowOverride All

</Directory>

SSLEngine on

SSLProtocol -ALL +SSLv3 +TLSv1

SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:!LOW:!SSLv2:!EXPORT

SSLCertificateFile /etc/pki/tls/certs/acme.com.crt

SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/pki/tls/private/acme.com.key

SSLCACertificateFile /etc/pki/tls/certs/gd_bundle.crt

</VirtualHost>

Of course the SSL portion of the template is optional.

Set X-Robots-Tag in Apache

August 10, 2012

The X-Robots-Tag HTTP header can be used to send directives to Google and other search engines. See this page for a discussion from Google: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_meta_tag In Apache you can implement the X-Robots-Tag using the Header directive. For example the following code will mark PDF documents as “noindex, nofollow”:


<Files ~ "\.pdf$">
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow"
</Files>

Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow"

</Files>

Install PHP SSH2 extension on RHEL 5.6 with EPEL repository

May 10, 2012

Here are the steps to install the PHP SSH2 extention on RHEL 5.6 with the EPEL repository. Install packages that may be needed:


yum install php-pear php-devel libssh2 libssh2-devel

yum install php-pear php-devel libssh2 libssh2-devel

Temporarily allow binary execution in /tmp


mount -o remount,exec /tmp

mount -o remount,exec /tmp

Install the extension:


pecl install channel://pecl.php.net/ssh2-0.11.3

pecl install channel://pecl.php.net/ssh2-0.11.3

Restore /tmp restrictions:


mount -o remount,noexec /tmp

mount -o remount,noexec /tmp

Reload apache:


/sbin/service httpd reload

/sbin/service httpd reload

Insert Varnish Cache With NAT Rule

November 8, 2011

Here’s a simple nat rule for iptables that will route incoming web traffic to your varnish cache. This allows you to implement varnish without reconfiguring apache. In the varnish config, set the backing do be 127.0.0.1:80.


iptables -D PREROUTING -s ! 127.0.0.1 -d 192.168.100.16 \
   -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT \
   --to-destination 192.168.100.16:6081 -t nat

iptables -D PREROUTING -s ! 127.0.0.1 -d 192.168.100.16 \

-p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT \

--to-destination 192.168.100.16:6081 -t nat

Here’s a different rule that also seems to work:


/sbin/iptables  -t nat -A PREROUTING \
   -i eth0 -d 46.105.124.96 -p tcp -m tcp \
   --dport 80 -j REDIRECT 6081

/sbin/iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING \

-i eth0 -d 46.105.124.96 -p tcp -m tcp \

--dport 80 -j REDIRECT 6081

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