‫‪Republic of Iraq‬‬ ‫جمهورية العراق‬

‫‪Ministry of Higher Education and‬‬ ‫وزارة التعليم العالي والبحث‬

‫‪Scientific Research‬‬ ‫العلمي‬
‫‪University of Babylon‬‬ ‫جامع ــة بابـ ـلـ‬
‫‪College of Information‬‬ ‫كلي ـ ــة تكنولوجيا املعلوماتـ‬
‫‪Technology‬‬ ‫قسم شبكات املعلومات‬
‫‪Department of Information‬‬ ‫التقرير النهائي‬
‫‪Network‬‬

‫التقرير النهائي‬

‫للعام الدراسي ‪ 2020-2019‬الفصل الدراسي (االول)‬

‫‪Web Server Using Apache in Linux‬‬

‫اعداد الطالب‬
‫عز الدين حيدر عبد االمير النداوي‬

‫ملادة(‪ )Introduction Of Linuxs‬املرحلة ( الرابعة ) الدراسة( املسائي )‬

‫بأشراف االستاذ‬

‫م‪.‬جورج عجام اسكندر‬

 Republic of Iraq ‫جمهورية العراق‬
Ministry of Higher Education and ‫وزارة التعليم العالي والبحث‬
Scientific Research ‫العلمي‬
University of Babylon ‫جامع ــة بابـ ـلـ‬
College of Information ‫كلي ـ ــة تكنولوجيا املعلوماتـ‬
Technology ‫قسم شبكات املعلومات‬
Department of Information ‫التقرير النهائي‬
Network

Contents

1 How to install the Apache web server 1

1.1 Installing Apache and utilities..........................................................................................................................................1
1.2 Checking running status of Apache..................................................................................................................................1
1.3 Serving your first website with Apache............................................................................................................................3
1.4 Wrapping up.....................................................................................................................................................................6
 Republic of Iraq ‫جمهورية العراق‬
Ministry of Higher Education and ‫وزارة التعليم العالي والبحث‬
Scientific Research ‫العلمي‬
University of Babylon ‫جامع ــة بابـ ـلـ‬
College of Information ‫كلي ـ ــة تكنولوجيا املعلوماتـ‬
Technology ‫قسم شبكات املعلومات‬
Department of Information ‫التقرير النهائي‬
Network

Preface

The Apache HTTP Server, colloquially called Apache, is the world’s most used web server software. Originally based on the
NCSA HTTPd server, development of Apache began in early 1995 after work on the NCSA code stalled. Apache played a
key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web, quickly overtaking NCSA HTTPd as the dominant HTTP server, and
has remained most popular since April 1996. In 2009, it became the first web server software to serve more than 100 million
websites.
Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software
Foundation. Most commonly used on a Unix-like system (usually Linux), the software is available for a wide variety of
operating systems besides Unix, including eComStation, Microsoft Windows, NetWare, OpenVMS, OS/2, and TPF. Released
under the Apache License, Apache is free and open-source software.
As of November 2015, Apache was estimated to serve 50% of all active websites and 37% of the top servers across all
domains. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_HTTP_Server/)
In this ebook, we provide a compilation of Apache HTTP Server tutorials that will help you get started with this web server.
We cover a wide range of topics, from installing the server and performing a basic configuration, to configuring Virtual Hosts
and SSL support. With our straightforward tutorials, you will be able to get your own projects up and running in minimum
time.
 Republic of Iraq ‫جمهورية العراق‬
Ministry of Higher Education and ‫وزارة التعليم العالي والبحث‬
Scientific Research ‫العلمي‬
University of Babylon ‫جامع ــة بابـ ـلـ‬
College of Information ‫كلي ـ ــة تكنولوجيا املعلوماتـ‬
Technology ‫قسم شبكات املعلومات‬
Department of Information ‫التقرير النهائي‬
Network

About the Author

Gabriel Canepa is a Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS-1500-0576-0100) and web developer from Villa
Mercedes, San Luis, Argentina.
He works for a worldwide leading consumer product company and takes great pleasure in using FOSS tools to increase produc-
tivity in all areas of his daily work.
When he’s not typing commands or writing code or articles, he enjoys telling bedtime stories with his wife to his two little
daughters and playing with them, the great pleasure of his life.
Chapter 1

How to install the Apache web server

In this example we will show how to install the Apache web server in CentOS 7.2 and Ubuntu 14.04.3 using the command line.
According to recent reports, Apache continues to keep the lead in the number of websites and Internet-facing machines when
compared to other web servers, such as Microsoft’s IIS or Nginx. Such has been the case for a long time, and that is why the
skill of knowing how to install, configure, and leverage Apache is on the rise everywhere.
In other words, by acquiring Apache skills you will learn how to use the number one server on the Internet.

1.1 Installing Apache and utilities

Perhaps the first thing that we need to note is that the package that includes Apache has different names in CentOS (httpd)
and Ubuntu (apache2). The good news is that in both cases, the package is included in the repositories that are configured
when the operating system is installed. For that reason, you do not need to make any modifications to the repositories in order
to install Apache.
In addition, we will install an extra package named apache2-utils and httpd-tools in Ubuntu and CentOS,
respectively. This package includes tools that will be useful to benchmark Apache, manage basic and digest authentication to
web pages, and resolve IP addresses to host names in the logs, among other things.
However, before you proceed please keep in mind that installing packages require administrative privileges, so you will need to
run the following commands either as root (in CentOS) or using sudo (in Ubuntu). With that in mind, let us proceed with
the installation.
In CentOS, type
yum update && yum install httpd httpd-tools -y

and press Enter.

In Ubuntu, do
sudo apt-get update && apt-get install apache2 apache2-utils -y

The package management system (yum or apt-get) will take care of installing all necessary dependencies required by the
web server.

1.2 Checking running status of Apache

Once the installation completes, we need to check whether the web server has been automatically started. Typically, that is the
case in Ubuntu but not in CentOS.
To check the running status of Apache in Ubuntu, type
service apache2 status

In Fig. 1.1 you can see the expected output when the web server is running. Otherwise, if it is stopped (as we forced it to using
sudo service apache2 stop

which is also shown in the image) you will need to run

sudo service apache2 start

to restart it. By now, you can safely ignore the AH00558 error message as it refers to an aspect of the web server configuration
that we will cover in the next tutorial of the Apache series.

Figure 1.1: Checking the running status of Apache in Ubuntu

In CentOS, you will use systemctl (the system and service manager tool) to verify the status of Apache:
systemctl status httpd

Fig. 1.2 shows the expected output when the web server is running and when it is not.
 Figure 1.2: Using systemctl to check Apache’s status in CentOS

Last but not least, we need to ensure that the web server is started automatically the next time the system boots. In Ubuntu, the
installation process by default will configure it to start after a reboot whereas in CentOS, you will need to start it by hand:
systemctl start httpd

and enable it for future reboots:

systemctl enable httpd

This ensures that Apache will be started by systemd each time the machine boots.
In Ubuntu, you can also get more information about Apache (web traffic statistics, server load and uptime, percentage of CPU
usage, number of requests currently being processed, to name a few examples) using
apachectl status

In CentOS this command is aliased to

systemctl status httpd

so you will not get more details than those shown in Fig. 1.2).

1.3 Serving your first website with Apache

After you have successfully installed Apache and got it running, it is time to look into serving web pages. Although we will
discuss this further in later articles, you need to know that Apache not only is used as a standalone server (that is, to store a
single website or application), but also to run several sites (also known as virtual hosts) at the same time.
For the time being, it is sufficient to indicate the place where the web server stores pages and see how it returns them upon a
request performed by a client - all in the context of a standalone server. To see Apache in action for the first time, launch a web
browser and point it to the IP address of the machine where Apache is running, as shown in Fig. 1.3 (192.168.0.29 is a CentOS
and 192.168.0.30 is Ubuntu).

Figure 1.3: Apache test page in CentOS and Ubuntu

If you cannot see the test page after starting Apache in CentOS and your web browser says it can’t establish a connection to the
web server, please check the following:

• Did you misspell the IP address in the browser’s URL bar?

• Is firewalld, the default firewall in CentOS 7 allowing http traffic?

You can check #2 as follows:

Type
firewall-cmd --add-services=http

then
firewall-cmd --add-services=http --permanent

and hit Enter. Then try to access the web server by IP as explained earlier.
To replace this default test page by one of ours, create a simple html file and save it as index.html in /var/www/html.
You can use the following example if you want:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset=utf-8 />
<title>Your first page served by Apache</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Check out the Apache series in SystemCodeGeeks.com!</h1>
<img src="https://systemcodegeeks.javacodegeeks.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/ ←›
uploads/2016/01/SystemCodeGeeks-logo.png" />
</body>
</html>

The result can be seen in Fig. 1.4:

Figure 1.4: Your first web page served by Apache

Next, feel free to create other subdirectories under /var/www/html and more html pages, and hyperlinks between them.
Congratulations! You have already taken your first step towards mastering Apache.
1.4 Wrapping up

In this tutorial we have explained how to install Apache, the most used server used by websites and Internet-facing computers,
in CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 14.04. In addition, we showed you how to replace the default test page with a custom one.
In the next articles of this series, we will discuss in greater depth the capabilities of Apache. Stay tuned.