There are a hundred and one thousand things that can go wrong with any web server installation. From a fresh installation to an installation that has been running for a long time, you never know when something is going to cause your web server to go astray. When it does happen, it’s always nice to know that, usually, Occam’s Razor applies.

In this tutorial you will find some advice that will help you through some of the more common issues that can pop up with an Apache web server.

Is your server actually running?

Believe it or not, this has happened to plenty of administrators. You take the server down, do some maintenance, and when you go to check out the server you’re getting errors. The first thing you do, naturally, is check out that /etc/apache2/apache.conf file to make sure your syntax is correct. But it’s perfect! What’s up? The first thing you might want to check is to make sure the server is running. But you don’t want to just issue the command to start the server or reload the server. Instead, issue the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 status

Which should return something like:

* apache is running (pid 9751).

If not, start the server with either:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

or

sudo apache2ctl start

NOTE: If you are using a distribution like Fedora, SuSE, or Mandriva you will need to first su to the root user and issue the above commands WITHOUT using sudo.

It’s not running and it won’t start

Did you just make changes to your Apache configuration file? Are the changes correct? If you’re not sure, you can use the apache2ctl command to check the syntax of your configuration file. This is done with the command:

sudo apache2ctl configtext

The above command should report:

Syntax OK

If you don’t get an OK, you will get information that points to the errors in your configuration file.

Apache wants to download .php files!

This is another common issue. When you add a new tool on your web server (such as Drupal), if your configuration file is set up properly, any .php file might not be displayed. Instead any attempt to view a .php file will instead have your browser trying to download the file. Why is this? Apache must be informed that certain extensions are to be displayed, not downloaded. This is done from within the Apache configuration file. Open up that file (in the Ubuntu server it will be /etc/apache2/apache2.conf) and first look for the following line:

DirectoryIndex index.html

If that file doesn’t include index.php nearly all sites that use php will be rendered useless.

The second line to look for is:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php

If you find this line, and it is commented out, make sure you uncomment it by removing the “#” character. If it is not there add it to the bottom of the configuration file.

And, as always, when you make a change to the configuration file, restart Apache.

Know where to look for problems

Finally, it is crucial that you know where to first turn when the above doesn’t help you out. Any time I have an issue with Apache where Occam’s Razor does not apply, the first place I turn is the log files.

If you look in /var/log/apache2 you will find, at least, the following files:

• access.log: This keeps track of any connection made to your server.
• error.log: This keeps track of any errors that occur with Apache.
• other_vhosts_access.log: This is where virtual hosts will log when the virtual host has not been prescribed its own log file.

Of course, as your site evolves so will your available log files. Regardless of what you find in /var/log/apache2, that is where you should always first turn when you have problems. Even before you google.

Final thoughts

Now you should be able to handle some of the more common issues with the Apache server. And if your problem isn’t common, you also know where to turn to find clues that will lead you down the right path to correction.

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Wampserver is an Apache web server for the Windows operating system. It provides in many regards the same functionality of other web server solutions like XAMPP or Home Web Server which we have reviewed in the past. The latest version of the local web server package will install Apache 2.2.11, MySQL 5.1.36 and PHP 5.3.0 on the local computer system.

One interesting unique feature is the ability to add different versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP to the installation in the form of add-ons. This can be very handy to test a website locally under multiple different Apache, MySQL or PHP release versions.

The installation of Wampserver will always install the latest versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP. One interesting security feature is the ability to limit access to the web server to localhost. It is required to click on the “put online” option to make it available to other computer systems as well.

Additional Apache, MySQL and PHP versions can be installed from the Wamp add-ons page. All add-ons are provided as executables that can be installed easily on the operating system.

Webmasters who need to test code offline can use Wampserver to do so. It is especially useful to test code against multiple versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP. Something that the other home server solutions do not provide.

Wampserver is Open Source and can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

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• Linux
• Apache
• MySQL
• P (can mean PHP or PERL – depends upon your needs)

LAMP servers are very popular, cheap, effective, flexible, and reliable servers. But how are they installed? Actually, it’s not that hard. In this tutorial I am going to show you how to install a LAMP in two different ways: From the command line (using separate tools) and using the tasksel tool.

Hardware needed

Fortunately a LAMP server can be installed on lower-end hardware and still serve as a fairly efficient server. Naturally if you are going to be using your LAMP server for high traffic, you will want to select your hardware wisely.

Install prerequisite

Before you begin the installation of your server you will need to have your operating system installed. This is the “L” of LAMP. So find your favorite Linux distribution and install the operating system. For the purposes of this installation I am going to be installing on a Ubuntu 9.04 server installation. This will be a console only server (no GUI desktop) which is fine because the installation is done via command line only.

Once you have your operating system installed you are ready to install your server.

Apache

This is the easiest portion to install. Either log in to your console or open up a terminal window (if you are working from a GUI desktop) and enter the following command:
sudo apt-get install apache2

You will have to enter your sudo user password for this installation to continue. Once this installation is complete check it by pointing a browser to that server IP address. You should instantly know if Apache is up and running.

PHP

For the purposes of this article we will assume the “P” stands for PHP. To install PHP (and all of its requirements) issue the command:

sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

Once this installation is complete restart Apache with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Let’s make sure this portion works properly. To test this create a file in the Apache document root (for this install it will be /var/www) called test.php. The contents of this file will be:
< ?php phpinfo(); ?>

Save that file and then point your browser to http://IP_ADDRESS/test.php

Where IP_ADDRESS is the actual IP address of your server.

You should see “Test PHP Page” written on your browsers page. If so, you’re good to go.

MySQL

Now to install MySQL. To do this issue the command:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Once this is done you then need to set a password for MySQL. To do this issue the command:

mysql -u root

which will put you in the MySQL prompt. From this prompt (which looks like mysql> ) enter the command:
SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('YOURPASSWORD');

Where YOURPASSWORD is the password you want to use for the mysql user.

Now start your MySQL server with the command:

/etc/init.d/mysql start

That’s it. Your LAMP server is up and running.

The quick version

You can actually install a full-on LAMP server on a (Ubuntu server install) with a single command:

sudo tasksel

You will need to select LAMP from the list and you will eventually be prompted for a MySQL password. That’s it.

Final thoughts

Getting a powerful, flexible web server up and running will take you less time and effort than you think. LAMP servers are an outstanding choice for your web servers’ needs.

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What is mod_security?

The mod_security addition to Apache is a modular way to add or remove various security features to your Apache server. You can add or remove these modules by simply adding or removing (or commenting out) lines to your httpd.conf file and restarting the httpd daemon. And installing mod_rewrite is as easy as it is to install.

Getting and installing

I am going to take you through the installation of mod_security on a CentOS distribution. There will be a combination of using yum and installing from source. I will assume Apache is already installed.

There are a few ways to install this package. You can install from source, but that will require you install numerous dependencies just for the compilation alone. Since we’re looking at CentOS (and this will apply to Red Hat and Fedora as well) you can use Yum for easy installation. But if you fire Yum up you will find that mod_security is not in the standard repositories. Fortunately there is an easy way to add a repo for this installation. The command to add the repostority is:
su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm'

You will have to answer ‘Y’ to a couple of questions to finish the installation. Once you have added the repository issue the command:

yum install mod_security

to install the system. You will have to accept any dependencies needed for your system to complete the installation. Once mod_security is installed you are ready to get it up and running on your Apache server.

Basic configuration

Issue the command:

grep -n security2_module httpd.conf

from within the /etc/httpd/conf/ directory. If you do not see any output that means you have to add the directive to your httpd.conf file. This is simple. At the end of your module loading section add the following line:

LoadModule security2_module modules/mod_security2.so

Now save the file and restart Apache with the command:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart

You should not receive any errors at this point.

The most difficult aspect of using mod_security is the the IfModule section in the httpd.conf file. The reason this section is so complex is because there are so many possible options. The best chance you have of getting familar with this is by taking a glance at the Configuration Directives page on the mod_security web site. To give you an example of a configuration directive section take a look at the following sample in Figure 1.

Figure 1

As you can see this section seems fairly complex. But this is mostly a basic sample of what mod_security can do. In this sample we do the following:

• SecFilterEngine On: Start the engine
• SecFilterDefaultAction: Set the default action for the module. Notice in the sample code i have the default action set to “allow”. For higher security you will want to set this to “deny”.
• SecFilterScanPOST: Tell mod_security to scan Payloads as well as Get requests.
• SecFilterCheckURLEncoding: Check for valid hex values in requests.
• SecFilterCheckUnicoding: Set this to off if your web site does not use unicoding.
• SecFilterForceByteRange: Set allowable ascii values in GET request and in FORM data posts.
• SecUploadDir: Set the upload directory.
• SecUploadKeepFiles: This must be set to On for the above to be used. For security’s sake you want to set it to  Off so upload files are not saved.
• SecAuditEngine: Enables the logging facility. This value is set to either RelevantOnly or DynamicOrRelevant.
• SecAuditLog: The location of the log file.
• SecFilterDebugLog: Set the debug log file.
• SecFilterDebugLevel: Set the debug level.

That is the minimum directives I would employ for your mod_security configuration.

Once you finish this section, restart Apache again and enjoy a much more secure Apache server.

Final thoughts

Of course this just scratches the surface of mod_security. To really get the most of this powerful feature you will want to really comb through the directives section on the mod_security site.

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In this article I will show you five simple ways to make your Linux Apache installation more secure. And of course you should always know that even with five new means of making your install more secure, that doesn’t mean it is perfectly safe from attack. Even after securing your installation, you should always keep watch over your server by checking log files and using standard security tools.

With that said, let’s get our Apache security on!

1. Update, update, update! One of the biggest no nos Linux administrators make is to “set it and forget it”. This should not be your standard policy. There are always updates that close new holes and patch security flaws. This holds true for Apache as much as it does any other system or application. Keep watch, using your normal means of update, for any security update for Apache or any constituent component you have installed. By doing this you will ensure your web server is safe from any new known issues.

2. Disable modules you do not use. If you check the Apache configuration file. Most often this file is called httpd.conf and its location will depend upon what distribution you are running (For example CentOS has this file in /etc/httpd/conf/ whereas Ubuntu locates it in /etc/apache2). If you examine that file you will see quite a few modules listed. These modules will look like:

LoadModule auth_basic_module modules/mod_auth_basic.so
LoadModule auth_digest_module modules/mod_auth_digest.so
LoadModule authn_file_module modules/mod_authn_file.so
LoadModule authn_alias_module modules/mod_authn_alias.so
LoadModule authn_anon_module modules/mod_authn_anon.so

You might have to look up what some of these modules do to know if you need them or not. But there is no reason to load a module if you are not going to use it. To keep a module from loading place a comment in front of the line. You will have to restart Apache for this change to take effect.

3. Limit the request sizes allowed. Denial of Service attacks remain one of the most popular attacks on web sites because they are the easiest to pull off. One way to protect your site from DoS attacks is to use the following directives wisely: LimitRequestBody, LimitRequestFields, LimitRequestFieldSize, LimitRequestLine, and LimitXMLRequestBody within a Directory tag (the document root is probably the best place for this). By default Apache sets these directives to unlimited which means any size of request can be made. You will want to investigate these directives and configure them to suit your web sites needs. Unless it is absolutely necessary, do not set them to unlimited.

4. Use mod_security. This is the most important module you can use. This one module handles such tasks as: Simple filtering, regular expression filtering, server identity masking, and URL encoding validation. It is likely you will have to install mod_security, because the default Apache install does not include this module. Once installed you will want to make sure you at least add the “unique_id” and “security2″ directives in your Apache module section and then restart Apache. I will deal with this module in its own tutorial coming up very soon.

Figure 1

5. Restrict browsing to your document root. The last thing you want is to allow browser to peek outside of the Apache document root (Such as /var/www/html or /var/www/). To do this you will want to configure your document root directory entry as shown in Figure 1. This will

Of course if you want to add options to any directory inside of the document root you will have to give that directory its own Directory entry.

Final thoughts

There are plenty more ways to secure your Apache installation, but these will get you started. Can you think of other ways to secure an Apache installation? If so, share them with your fellow ghacks readers.

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• Get course information
• Contact the instructor
• Read or download lecture notes
• Get assignments
• Ask questions and get answers
• Communicate with other students

CourseForum is incredibly easy to “install” on Linux, Windows, Mac,? FreeBSD, or Solaris and can be accessed from any web browser. Let’s take a look at this classroom software from the Linux point of view.

Getting and Installing

Since CourseForum even has its own server built in you can install CourseForum anywhere on a Linux machine. CourseForum comes in a single executable binary that starts and runs CourseForum on port 3455. So after you download the demo follow these steps (as either the root user or using sudo):

Untar the package into your servers’ document root (i.e. /var/www/html for Fedora /var/www in Ubuntu)

Change into the newly created directory (courseforum-linux) and issue the command:

./courseforum &

The CourseForum daemon will start and you can now point your browser to:

http://IP_OR_DOMAIN:3445

Where IP_OR_DOMAIN is either the IP address or domain the server is on.

CourseForum Admin Page

This address will take you to the front page of CourseForum. The first thing you will need to do (before you can do anything else) is set an administrative password. Once you do that you can access the administration page and start building your course. NOTE: The demo is restricted to only a single course. If you purchase the full version you can create unlimited courses.

As you can see (in the image to the left) all administration tasks are taken care of in one window. There isn’t a lot of admin work to do with this software which makes it an even better solution for busy instructors.

Some of the more important tasks your instructors will want to do are:

• Messages: This is really just the welcome message displayed on the front page of CourseForum.
• Custom Links: This isn’t really what it sounds like. What this feature does is allow you to create custom? commands that can do any number of things like formatting or integrating third-party content. There is a good how-to page on the CourseForum site to illustrate how these are created.
• RSS/Email Notification: If you want to enable RSS feeds and/or email notification on your CourseForum site you will have to enter the information for your SMTP server here.
• Web Views: This allows you to create a read-only version of the CourseForum. Since the basis of CourseForum is a wiki, any registered user will be able to edit pages, so you will want to be ablel to serve up versions of pages (such as Syllaubus, lectures, etc) that are read-only for the public to view.

There is one administrative task I would highly recommend. When you create a new course you will have to administer that course independently of the site administration (In other words it has its own admin page). Within the course administration page you will want to take care of at least two things:

• Check the “Only course administrator can create projects” check box.
• Under the Require Password dropdown select “To edit pages” otherwise any registered user can edit your course pages.

And that’s pretty much it. The rest of the tool works like a standard Wiki page.

Final Thoughts

If you have been looking for a tool to allow students (of any type) to not only stay current in your classroom but also be able to interact, CourseForum might very well be the solution for you. I have deployed it for a few teachers who have been very pleased with the results. It’s remarkably seasy to install, simple to use, reliable, and it’s a fairly cheap solution ($119.00 USD).

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In this article I will show you how to add name-based virtual hosts in your Apache web server. This will require you to edit the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file so be prepared for some command-line action. NOTE: This file can be located in various locations

If you’ve never edited your httpd.conf file don’t worry, it’s not that difficult. Just make sure you use good comments so you know what you did and where you did it. Otherwise your virtual host section could get lost in the other sections.

The section of Apache where your virtual hosts will go is called, aptly, Virtual Hosts. The format of an entry looks like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin@dummy-host.example.com
DocumentRoot /www/docs/dummy-host.example.com
ServerName dummy-host.example.com
ErrorLog logs/dummy-host.example.com-error_log
CustomLog logs/dummy-host.example.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

Before you actually start configuring your virtual host you need to make sure you have the NameVirtualHosts line uncommented out. The line will look like:

NameVirtualHosts *

You can find the line by using the grep command like so:

grep -n NameVirtualHosts /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

(NOTE: Edit the path to your httpd.conf file to reflect your setup.)

The grep command will return to you which line the NameVirtualHost entry is on. Now open up the Nano editor and scroll down a bit. You can hit the key combination Ctrl-c to find out what line you are on. Once you find the line you will remove the “#” character (no quotes).

With that out of the way you are ready.

To illustrate how this is done I will show you how to create a virtual server for mail. The following assumes the doc root is /var/www/. Add the following entries to your httpd.conf file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /www/yourcompany
ServerName www.yourcompany.com
# Other directives here
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /www/mail
ServerName mail.yourcompany.com
# Other directives here
</VirtualHost>

NOTE: Where yourcompany.com is the actual FQDN you use.

NOTE: If you need to change your port you can change it to suit your needs from the default port 80.

The above is the bare minimum configuration for your virtual servers. There are a LOT of possible directives you can use. For example, you might want to add error logging to these virtual hosts for debugging purposes. To add error logs to your virtual mail host? you would add the lines:

ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/mail-error_log common
CustomLog /var/log/httpd/mail-access_log common

To your mail virtual host entry (above the </VirtualHost> line.)

Once you have these entries complete you will need to save the httpd.conf file and restart Apache. To restart Apache issue one of the following commands:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart

or

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

You’re done. You should now be able to hit the new virtual hosts.

Final Thoughts

Creating virtual hosts is a quick way to expand the capabilities of your Apache server, cut costs, and save IP addreses. Have you ever deployed virtual hosts with Apache? If so, share your experiences.

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The web server can be downloaded in various configurations. The various configurations range from a bare-bone Apache web server to a web server supporting MySQL, SQLite, Pearl and PHP. The configuration only has an effect on the type of applications that can be run on the web server. Most users will probably need at least MySQL and PHP support to run their websites locally.

The web server can be started by double-clicking on the Server2Go.exe executable file in the root directory of the server. This will load the various web server modules and display a start page in the web browser. The pms_config.ini file can be used to change various settings of the web server including the default web browser, the port and whether the modules like MySQL or PHP should be started as well.

The actual files of a website are placed in the htdocs directory of the web server. Loading them can be as easy as pointing your browser to 127.0.0.1:4001 or some subdirectory of it depending on the type of site.

MySQL comes with phpMyAdmin which is accessible from the main interface of the web server. Server2Go offers an uncomplicated way to run a web server, it is especially helpful in environments where software installations are restricted.

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I use it mainly to secure certain directories on my websites from being accessed without the proper authorization. This is the admin directory in the case of Wordpress for instance but could also be used to secure a directory that hosts some valuable files.

I would like to point out two possibilities that secure a directory with .htacess. The first is to protect the directory by only allowing users with a certain IP or IP range access to it. Everyone else would receive an access denied error message.

The second possibility would be to create usernames and passwords that have to be supplied before accessing the content.

IP Protection:

Create a .htaccess file and add the following code to it:

AuthName "Protected Content"
AuthType Basic

order deny,allow
deny from all
#Comment
allow from 255.255.255.255


Change the IP address in the last line to the one used by the user / users. You can use wildcards * if the user is receiving dynamic IPs from his ISP. It is possible to add as many allow from lines to the .htaccess file as you want. Place that htaccess file in the directory that you want to protect. (all subdirectories are affected as well.

The problem with this kind of protection is twofold. If your IP changes, say you are on holiday or accessing from a different location, you need to add or change the IPs in the htaccess code. Users who happen to have a IP of that range can access the content without problems. This is usually a user from the same ISP.

A more secure protection is the basic auth protection.

Password Protection:

Whenever a user tries to access a directory or file a popup will appear asking the user for a username and password. This method requires two files, a htaccess file and a htpasswd file. The htpasswd file stores the usernames and encrypted passwords and should be placed outside of the root directory of the website.

AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /path/to/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
require valid-user

Since the passwords are encrypted you need to use a script to do that. A working one is the htpasswd Content Generator. Just enter a username and password and click on encrypt. Paste the line on the results page into the htpasswd file and place it exactly in the path that you specified in AuthUserFile.

It is possible to combine both protections for added security. I would begin by evaluating if your webhost is allowing those kind of files.

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The only disadvantage that I can think of is that you will not use the latest version on their website and that you have to update the database to keep up to date. The English database file has a size of more than 3 Gigabytes – packed that is – and it can take some time to download it depending on your Internet connection.

I did use a download manager to make sure that the download does not get interrupted and I have to start over again. Here is the list of files that you do need, I walk you through the installation afterwards:

• Wikipedia Database Snapshot – the file needed is currently called enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2
• An Apache server. I did use the free XAMPP to install it on my Windows system.
• Wikifilter – the script that makes Wikipedia available in the Apache server.

I suggest you start by downloading the files needed. The Wikipedia database download will naturally take longer than the other two downloads which is excellent for our purpose. Once XAMPP has been downloaded install it. You are asked if you want to add services to your system during installation, this is not needed. Make sure you start the XAMPP control panel afterwards.

Keep this open and wait for the downloads to finish. Now unpack the file that contains the Wikipedia articles and wait for it to finish. The unpacked file has a size of more than 13 Gigabytes so make sure you have enough free hard drive space on that drive.
Now add the date of the release in the format YYYYMMDD to the file name. I added it at the end before the .xml.

Now run WikiIndex.exe and drag and drop the XML file in the program window. It starts indexing the database file which should take a while as well (5 minutes on my system). We are almost done now.

You need to locate the httpd.conf file in the XAMPP directory and add an entry to it. The file is located in xampp\apache\conf. Just open it with a normal text editor and add the following line at the end:

LoadModule WikiFilter_module “C:/Program Files/WikiFilter/WikiFilter.so”

Please replace the path to the WikiFilter.so file with the path on your system. You should also note that the file path uses “/” instead of the usual “\” to separate directories.

Start Apache using the XAMPP control panel and point your browser to the url http://localhost/wiki/.

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Download Xampp for Windows and install it on your system. It does not matter if you install the modules as services, you can activate them as well by opening the control panel. (start apache) Once installed the webserver should be accessible by typing in http://localhost or http://yourdynamicip; You can look up your dynamic ip using my ip lookup script. Hosting files is as easy, just upload all the files that you want to share into the subfolder htdocs or create a subfolder and add the files to it.

Access the subfolder by appending /subfolder/ to the url that you want to access. You can add html and php files as well and those can be accessed as well similar to those files on other websites. It is easy to secure folders or the complete server using so called .htaccess files. Use the htaccess generator and add the generated files to your directories that you want to protect.

There is one last thing that can be optimized. It is difficulty for others to access your webserver if you have dynamic IPs. To counter this you could use a free service like DynDNS which adds a static dns to your IP. Friends and everyone else who should access the webserver can then use the dynamic dns which looks something like subdomain.dyndns.bz instead of the dynamic IP address.

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Now i don’t know how many readers work with websites, but maybe some of you can use this link. It’s an article on how to speed up sites using .htaccess file. It is quite a read but it looks promising, and the comment discussion there can also prove to be quite useful.

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