Contents
========
Apache2 Configuration under Debian GNU/Linux
Files and Directories in /etc/apache2
Tools
Using mod_disk_cache
SSL
Enabling SSL
Creating self-signed certificates
SSL workaround for MSIE
Suexec
Documentation
Upgrades
Common Problems
Apache2 Configuration under Debian GNU/Linux
============================================
Debian's default Apache2 installation attempts to make adding and
removing modules, virtual hosts, and extra configuration directives as
flexible as possible, in order to make automating the changes and
administering the server as easy as possible.
Please be aware that this layout is quite different from the standard
Apache configuration. Due to the use of environment variables, apache2
needs to be started/stopped with /etc/init.d/apache2 or apache2ctl.
Calling /usr/bin/apache2 directly will not work with the default
configuration. To call apache2 with specific command line arguments,
just call apache2ctl with the same arguments.
Files and Directories in /etc/apache2:
-------------------------------------
apache2.conf
This is the main configuration file.
envvars
This contains environment variables that may be used in the
configuration. Some settings, like user and pid file, need to
go in here so that other scripts can use them. It can also
be used to change some default settings used by apache2ctl.
Here is also the default LANG=C setting that can be changed
to a different language.
conf.d/
Files in this directory are included by this line in
apache2.conf:
# Include generic snippets of statements
Include /etc/apache2/conf.d
This is a good place to add additional configuration
directives. Packages should not use configuration
files that start with 'local-' or end with '.local'.
The local administrator can use these filenames to make
sure that there are no conflicts with files provided by
packages.
If the local administrator is not comfortable with packages
activating their config files by default, it is possible
to change the 'Include /etc/apache2/conf.d/' in apache2.conf
into 'Include /etc/apache2/conf.d.enabled/' and create that
directory. He can then put symlinks to the files in conf.d
which he wants to enable into conf.d.enabled.
httpd.conf
Empty file.
magic
Empty file.
mods-available/
This directory contains a series of .load and .conf files.
The .load files contain the Apache configuration directive
necessary to load the module in question. The respective
.conf files contain configuration directives necessary to
utilize the module in question.
mods-enabled/
To actually enable a module for Apache2, it is necessary to
create a symlink in this directory to the .load (and .conf, if
it exists) files associated with the module in
mods-available/. For example:
cgi.load -> /etc/apache2/mods-available/cgi.load
ports.conf
Configuration directives for which ports and IP addresses to
listen to.
sites-available/
Like mods-available/, except it contains configuration
directives for different virtual hosts that might be used with
apache2. Note that the hostname doesn't have to correspond
exactly with the filename. 'default' is the default host.
sites-enabled/
Similar in functionality to mods-enabled/, sites-enabled
contains symlinks to sites in sites-available/ that the
admnistrator wishes to enable.
Apache uses the first VirtualHost that matches the IP/Port
as default for named virtual hosts. Therefore the 'default'
site is linked to '000-default' so that it will be read first.
Example:
dedasys -> /etc/apache2/sites-available/dedasys
The Include directive ignores files with names that
- do not begin with a letter or number
- contain a character that is neither letter nor number nor _-.
- contain .dpkg
Other files
-----------
For historical reasons, the pid file is in /var/run/apache2.pid and not in
/var/run/apache2/apache2.pid.
Tools
-----
a2enmod and a2dismod are available for enabling and disabling modules utilizing
the above configuration system.
a2ensite and a2dissite do essentially the same thing as the above tools, but
for sites rather than modules.
Using mod_disk_cache
====================
To ensure that the disk cache does not grow indefinitely, htcacheclean is
started when mod_disk_cache is enabled. Both daemon and cron (daily) mode
are supported. The configuration (run mode, cache size, ...) is in
/etc/default/apache2 .
Normally, htcacheclean is automatically started and stopped by
/etc/init.d/apache2. However, if you change the state of mod_disk_cache or the
configuration of htcacheclean while apache2 is running, you may need to
manually start/stop htcacheclean with "/etc/init.d/apache2 start-htcacheclean"
or "/etc/init.d/apache2 stop-htcacheclean".
SSL
===
Enabling SSL
------------
To enable SSL, type (as user root):
a2ensite default-ssl
a2enmod ssl
If you want to use self-signed certificates, you should install the ssl-cert
package (see below). Otherwise, just adjust the SSLCertificateFile and
SSLCertificateKeyFile directives in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl to
point to your SSL certificate. Then restart apache:
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
The SSL key file should only be readable by root, the certificate file may be
globally readable. These files are read by the Apache parent process which runs
as root. Therefore it is not necessary to make the files readable by the
www-data user.
Creating self-signed certificates
---------------------------------
If you install the ssl-cert package, a self-signed certificate will be
automatically created using the hostname currently configured on your computer.
You can recreate that certificate (e.g. after you have changed /etc/hosts or
DNS to give the correct hostname) as user root with:
make-ssl-cert generate-default-snakeoil --force-overwrite
To create more certificates with different host names, you can use
make-ssl-cert /usr/share/ssl-cert/ssleay.cnf /path/to/cert-file.crt
This will ask you for the hostname and place both SSL key and certificate in
the file /path/to/cert-file.crt . Use this file with the SSLCertificateFile
directive in the apache config (you don't need the SSLCertificateKeyFile in
this case as it also contains the key). The file /path/to/cert-file.crt should
only be readable by root. A good directory to use for the additional
certificates/keys is /etc/ssl/private .
SSL workaround for MSIE
-----------------------
The SSL workaround for MS Internet Explorer needs to be added to your SSL
VirtualHost section (it was previously in ssl.conf but caused keepalive to be
disabled even for non-SSL connections):
BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" \
nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
BrowserMatch "MSIE [17-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown
The default SSL virtual host in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl
already contains this workaround.
Suexec
======
Debian ships two version of the suexec helper program required by mod_suexec.
It is not installed by default, to avoid possible security issues. The package
apache2-suexec contains the standard version that works only with document root
/var/www, userdir suffix public_html, and apache run user www-data. The package
apache2-suexec-custom contains a customizable version, that can be configured
with a config file to use different settings (like /srv/www as document root).
For more information see the suexec(8) man page in the apache2-suexec-custom
package.
Since apache2-suexec-custom has received less testing and might be slightly
slower, apache2-suexec is the recommended version unless you need the features
from apache2-suexec-custom.
Documentation
=============
The full apache 2 documentation can be found on the web at
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/
or, if you have installed the apache2-doc package, in
/usr/share/doc/apache2-doc/manual/
or at
http://localhost/manual/
There is also a wiki that contains useful information:
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/
Upgrades
========
Changes in the apache packages that require manual configuration adjustments
are announced in NEWS.Debian. Installing the apt-listchanges package is
recommended. It will display the relevant NEWS.Debian sections before
upgrades.
Common Problems
===============
1) Error message "Could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name,
using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName" during start
This can usually be ignored but it means that Apache httpd was unable to obtain
a fully-qualified hostname by doing a reverse lookup on your server's IP
address. You may want to add the fully-qualified hostname to /etc/hosts .
2) Error message "mod_rewrite: could not create rewrite_log_lock"
This probably means that there are some stale SYSV semaphores around. This
usually happens after apache2 has been killed with kill -9 (SIGKILL). You can
clean up the semaphores with:
ipcs -s | grep www-data | awk ' { print $2 } ' | xargs ipcrm sem
3) Message "NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts" in error log
Probably the VirtualHost definitions have not been adjusted after the
NameVirtualHost directive was changed in ports.conf.
See /usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/NEWS.Debian.gz
4) Message "File does not exist: /htdocs" in error log
In most cases this means that no matching VirtualHost definition could be
found for an incoming request.
5) Message "Couldn't create pollset in child; check user or system limits" in
error log
On Linux kernels since 2.6.27.8, the value in
/proc/sys/fs/epoll/max_user_instances
needs to be larger than
for prefork/itk MPM: 2 * MaxClients
for worker/event MPM: MaxClients + MaxClients/ThreadsPerChild
It can be set on boot by adding a line like
fs.epoll.max_user_instances=1024
to /etc/sysctl.conf.
There are several other error messages related to creating a pollset that can
appear for the same reason.
On the other hand, errors about to adding to a pollset are related to the
setting fs.epoll.max_user_watches. On most systems, max_user_watches should be
high enough by default.
6) Message "Server should be SSL-aware but has no certificate configured" in
error log
Since 2.2.12, Apache is stricter about certain misconfigurations concerning
name based SSL virtual hosts. See NEWS.Debian.gz for more details.
Generated by dwww version 1.11.2 on Sat Feb 13 21:27:38 CET 2010.