9/13/24, 3:44 PM How to Setup a Raspberry Pi Apache Web Server - Pi My Life Up

How to Setup a Raspberry Pi Apache Web Server

by Emmet  Updated Jan 03, 2024  Beginner  Servers     

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In this Raspberry Pi Apache project, we will be showing you how to install and setup an Apache web server
on the Raspberry Pi.

By itself, Apache can serve HTML files over the HTTP and HTTPS web protocols. Alongside additional
modules such as PHP, Apache is also able to serve dynamic content.

Apache is one of the most popular web servers available for the Raspberry Pi. Apache alone accounts for
44% of all web servers in the world.

An alternative to Apache is an Nginx web server and is considered to be much faster than Apache at certain
tasks. It’s entirely up to you on which technology you want to proceed with using.

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Within this Raspberry Pi Apache tutorial, we will be walking you through the steps to setting up Apache,
installing PHP, and also creating your first basic Apache VirtualHost file.

In this tutorial, we touch on all the basics of Apache, however, do not touch on setting up MYSQL and
PHPMyAdmin. We also don’t cover setting up WordPress on the Raspberry Pi. These are all topics covered in
separate tutorials.

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Equipment List

Below are all the bits and pieces that I used for this Raspberry Pi Apache Web Server tutorial.

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Recommended

 Raspberry Pi ( Amazon | SunFounder )

 Micro SD Card ( Amazon | SunFounder )

 Power Supply ( Amazon | SunFounder )

 Ethernet Cable ( Amazon ) or Wi-Fi ( Amazon | SunFounder )

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Optional

 Raspberry Pi Case ( Amazon | SunFounder )

 USB Keyboard ( Amazon | SunFounder )

 USB Mouse ( Amazon | SunFounder )

 HDMI Cable ( Amazon | SunFounder )

 Monitor ( Amazon | SunFounder )

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How to Install the Apache Web Server on the Raspberry Pi

1. Before we install Apache to our Raspberry Pi, we must first ensure the package list is up to date by
running the following two commands.

Terminal $  Copy

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

2. First, we will need to install the Apache2 package on our Raspberry Pi.
For those who don’t know what Apache is, it is a server software that serves the HTML files from a computer
to the web browser.

To install apache2 on your Raspberry Pi, enter the following command into the terminal.

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Terminal $  Copy

sudo apt install apache2 -y

3. With Apache2 installed to our Raspberry Pi, we now have an extremely basic web server up and running.
The server will be able to provide non-dynamic content such as HTML files.

In the next section, we will be extending this basic Apache web server by installing PHP to the Raspberry Pi.

To check that Apache is up and running on your Raspberry Pi, you can enter the Raspberry Pi’s IP address
into a web browser. The server should return a webpage with some simple text on it.

If you do not know the IP, you can enter the hostname command into the terminal to retrieve it.

Terminal $  Copy

hostname -I

4. In a web browser, enter your Raspberry Pi’s IP Address, it should connect and load a page like the one
below.

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5. To be able to make changes to the files within the /var/www/html without using root we need to setup
some permissions.

Firstly, we add the user pi (our user) to the www-data group, the default group for Apache2.

Secondly, we give ownership to all the files and folders in the /var/www/html directory to the www-data
group.

Terminal $  Copy

sudo usermod -a -G www-data pi

sudo chown -R -f www-data:www-data /var/www/html

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Once you have run that command, you will need to logout and then log back in for the changes to take
effect.

6. You can now make changes to the default web page by running the following command.
This command will use the nano text editor to modify the index.html file.

The web server will serve all files within the /var/www/html/ directory.

Terminal $  Copy

sudo nano /var/www/html/index.html

Apache is a basic web server and is great if you want to learn HTML, JS, or CSS.

However, if you are after PHP (Used for dynamic web pages) then continue to the next section of our
Raspberry Pi Apache tutorial.

Setting up PHP for Apache

1. Please note that before you start this section, you should be running at least Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye.
You can learn how to upgrade to Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye in our guide.

To start this section, we will need to go ahead and install PHP 8.2 and several other packages to our
Raspberry Pi. The additional packages we are installing are ones that are commonly used by PHP
applications.

Run the following command to install all the PHP packages to your Raspberry Pi.

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Terminal $  Copy

sudo apt install php8.2 libapache2-mod-php8.2 php8.2-mbstring php8.2-mysql php8.2-curl php8.2-

If you run into a “ package not found ” error, please follow our guide that covers adding a third-party PHP
repository. This repository should give you access to newer releases of PHP.

2. Now that PHP is installed to our Raspberry Pi, we can test it to make sure it’s working.
We don’t have to worry about modifying any configuration files as this is automatically done when Apache is
detected.

We can test to see PHP is working by creating a PHP file within the /var/www/html/ directory. Creating a file
in this directory will allow it to be processed and displayed when you open it in a web browser.

For our example, we will be creating a PHP file called example.php . We can create this file by issuing the
following command.

Terminal $  Copy

sudo nano /var/www/html/example.php

3. In this file, we need to add the following lines on PHP code.

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Add >  Copy

<?php
echo "Today's date is ".date('Y-m-d H:i:s');

The code above is just an incredibly simple PHP script that prints out today’s date retrieved using PHP’s
date() function. It will be enough to tell us that PHP is, in fact, up and running.

4. Now save the file by pressing CTRL + X then pressing Y and hitting ENTER .

5. In your web browser, go to http://192.168.1.103/example.php .

Make sure you replace 192.168.1.103 with your Raspberry Pi’s IP Address.

Going to the following URL should display something like the following.

Example PHP Script Output

Today's date is 2019-06-28 21:30:45

Setting up an Apache Virtual Host

Virtual hosts are an essential part of the way Apache works. Apache uses these Virtualhost files so that it
knows how to handle an individual site.

Within this section, we will show you how to create a basic virtual host file on your Raspberry Pi Apache web
server. Virtual hosts are Apache’s way of handling multiple websites with each Virtual Host file setting up and
configuring a particular domain.

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1. Begin by running the following command to create a basic virtual host file called example.com.conf within
the /etc/apache2/sites-available folder.

If you plan on using this for an actual domain name, make sure you swap out example.com with the domain
name.

Terminal $  Copy

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf

2. Within this file, enter the following text.

We will explain each part of the virtual host file as we go along so you can have an idea on how to set up a
very basic virtual host.

example.com.conf - Line 1

<VirtualHost *:80>

This line designates the start of the virtual host and that this virtual host should listen on port 80.

For those who do not know port 80 is the default port for http. Likewise, the port utilized for https is 443.

example.com.conf - Lines 2 - 3

ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com

Here we add two directives to our virtual host. The first of these directives called ServerName designates the
base domain. This server name is used to match the VirtualHost to a domain name.

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The second directive, ServerAlias , defines additional domain names that will be matched as if they were the
base domain name.

This directive is useful for matching additional names such as a www. subdomain.

example.com.conf - Line 4

DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html

The DocumentRoot directive defines the directory where all the files will be served from by Apache.

example.com.conf - Lines 5 - 6

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example.com_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example.com_access.log combined

In these final two directives ErrorLog and CustomLog we specify the locations where we want that log files to
be kept.

example.com.conf - Line 7

</VirtualHost>

Finally, we close off the VirtualHost section.

3. With everything complete, the code should end up looking like what we have below. Of course, using
your domain name and not example.com .

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example.com.conf - Final Config

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example.com_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example.com_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Once done, save the file by pressing CTRL + X followed by Y then ENTER .

4. Let’s now create the folder where we will be storing our HTML files. We will take ownership of this folder
for the www-data group as well.

Run the following command to create the folder we need and take ownership of it.

Terminal $  Copy

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public_html

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/example.com/public_html

5. Now that we have created our VirtualHost and the folder for it, let’s go ahead and now activate it by
running the following command.

This command creates a symlink for our config file between the /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ directories.

Terminal $  Copy

sudo a2ensite example.com.conf

6. Finally, for our new virtual host file to be loaded in, we need to tell the Apache2 service to reload its
configuration.

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This can be done simply by running the command below.

Terminal $  Copy

sudo systemctl reload apache2

You can now point a domain name server (DNS) to the Raspberry Pi’s public IP and have it serve files for the
requested domain name. You will need to setup port forwarding to have this work correctly.

By now you should have the Apache web server running on your Raspberry Pi. You should also have a decent
idea on how to setup PHP and virtual hosts on Apache.

If you have any feedback, questions, tips or anything else then please don’t hesitate to leave a comment
below.

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 15 Comments

Ryan Cronin on March 23, 2023 at 5:24 pm

Running this on a raspberry pi 2B for reference. At point 6 if fails the reload.

So I put in the command:
sudo systemctl status apache2.service
Got this in the result:
Process: 10380 ExecReload=/user/sbin/apachectl graceful (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Any ideas?

Reply

Emmet on March 23, 2023 at 11:16 pm

 Editor

Hi Ryan,

Sadly that part of the status isn’t helpful on telling why Apache failed to start on your Raspberry Pi.

There should be some additional text outputted when running that command, potentially it could
contain the actual error that occurred for Apache2 to not launch.

If possible please provide more information about the issue you are running into.

Cheers,
Emmet

Reply

Gez on December 28, 2022 at 9:02 am

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Great instructions but “How to Install the Apache Web Server on the Raspberry Pi” point 6 is wrong – you
need to use sudo! Can you update please?

Reply

Emmet on December 28, 2022 at 9:40 pm

 Editor

Hi Gez,

Thank you for the heads up, I have now corrected that part of the tutorial.

Cheers,
Emmet

Reply

gene stamper on December 17, 2022 at 10:39 pm

Very quick installation, thanks to the very clear instructions.

Thanks
Gene

Reply

Richard on February 14, 2021 at 11:06 pm

Best article I have read on this topic. As a senior citizen I enjoy/drive myself mad playing with computers. If I
had found this earlier i would have enjoyed myself sooner.
A model of clarity for an old duffer

Reply

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John Webb on November 13, 2020 at 8:14 am

Is it possible to put WordPress on this installation

Reply

Emmet on November 13, 2020 at 12:15 pm

 Editor

Hi John,

You can definitely use this installation to run WordPress on your Raspberry Pi.

In fact we even have a guide on doing just that.

Cheers,
Emmet

Reply

Corey on August 6, 2020 at 1:16 pm

This is great! Clear, simple straight forward. I’m currently working through the port forwarding and Fail2Ban
tutorials now.

It would be nice to see a full tutorial (or string of tutorials) on how to go from “Pi in a box” to “Hello world
displayed on your public website”.

LOVE this website!

Reply

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Erik on March 3, 2020 at 11:18 am

After entering the ownership commands and rebooting, I still can’t edit the “index.html” file without sudo.

Reply

Emmet on March 13, 2020 at 10:36 am

 Editor

Hi Erik,

That is correct, as we are giving ownership of files to the www-data user not the pi user.

Cheers,
Emmet

Reply

peter on January 31, 2020 at 9:03 am

Great Tutorial
Is the double reference to php7.3-curl correct ?

Reply

Gus on February 1, 2020 at 11:01 am

 Editor

Hi Peter,

Thanks for pointing that out! It’s not correct, so I have removed the second reference.

Reply

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Dewa on December 4, 2019 at 6:57 pm

Hey, I need to thank you for giving this tutorial it really help me. But I have a problem, I couldn’t run the
command “sudo apt install php7.3 php7.3-mbstring php7.3-mysql php7.3-curl php7.3-gd php7.3-curl
php7.3-zip -y”. It’s said these information :

E: Unable to locate package php7.3

[SNIPPED]
Could you solve it ?
Best Regards,
Dewa

Reply

Emmet on December 4, 2019 at 7:48 pm

 Editor

Hi Dewa,

Make sure that you are running Raspbian Buster or newer.

Cheers,
Emmet

Reply

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