Thursday, December 17, 2015

How To Configure Apache VirtualHost on RHEL 7 on AWS

Overview

Virtual hosts means hosting more than one website’s on Apache web server.

The purpose of this guide is to configure virtual hosts on a different ports and different document content folder. It is always a best practice to configure SELinux in enforcing mode to have extra layer of security on the server that is exposed to the internet domain.

Applies To

Tested on RHEL 7, CentOS 7.

Pre-Requisites

·        apache httpd
·        policycoreutils-python (semanage command)

Configure Apache – VirtualHost

One of the features with apache is configuring virtualhost for hosting multiple websites on a webserver and configuring these website on a different ports also.

All the configurations has to be done with “apache” user. Daemon start/restart/status command should be executed with “root” user.

Default – Listen

Next we will list the “Listen” directive (port to listen) that has been configured. By default this directive is configured to listen on port “80”; run the command;

cat /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf | grep ^Listen

Default – DocumentRoot

First and foremost thing that has to be done is to know the “DocumentRoot” directive that has been configured in apache main configuration file “httpd.conf”. By default this directive is configured as “/var/www/html”.

cat /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf | grep ^DocumentRoot

Default – List DocumentRoot

Next we will list the folder DocumentRoot “/var/www/”, run the command;

cd /var/www/ ; ll

New Website Directory

Create the new website directory, where we intend create new website and change the owner of the folder to apache user and group.

mkdir -v /var/www/example{2..3}; cd /var/www/

chown -R apache:apache example{2..3} ; ll

Add Listen

Next step is to configure listen port directive, edit “httpd.conf” and add the directive entries as below.
Listen :80
Listen :81
Listen :82

Add VirtualHost Directive

Next step is to create a new VirtualHost directive entries for different ports, as below.

Default Port – 80

Configuration directives for port 80 and virtual host.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@domain.com
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/html"
    ServerName example1.domain.com
    ServerAlias example1.domain.com
    ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/example1/error_log"
    CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/example1/access_log" common
    <Directory /var/www/html>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Alternate Port – 81

Configuration directives for port 81 and virtual host.
<VirtualHost *:81>
    ServerAdmin admin@domain.com
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/example2"
    ServerName example2.domain.com
    ServerAlias example2.domain.com
    ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/example2/error_log"
    CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/example2/access_log" common
    <Directory /var/www/example2>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Alternate Port – 82

Configuration directives for port 82 and virtual host.
<VirtualHost *:82>
    ServerAdmin admin@domain.com
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/example3"
    ServerName example3.domain.com
    ServerAlias example3.domain.com
    ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/example3/error_log"
    CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/example3/access_log" common
    <Directory /var/www/example3>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Parse Config File

To show the settings as parsed from the config file and show errors in the configuration, run the command; 

httpd -S

Note: In this case log file directories are not created, hence the check has failed.

Create – Log Directories

Next step is to create log directories for “example1”, “example2” and “example3” in “/var/log/httpd/”. In this directory all the access and error logs will be generated and stored, to create these directories run the command;

mkdir -v /var/log/httpd/example{1..3}

Validate Syntax

After parsing the configuration file, next we will check for syntax errors to validate the syntax, run the command; if no issues are found “Syntax OK” will be displayed.

httpd -t

Parse Config File

After creating the directory, rerun the parse config file and show errors if any, if no errors are reported, it will list all the main parameters configured, run the command 

httpd -S

Restart Service – httpd

After validating the configuration and verifying the syntax, next you can go ahead and restart the httpd service and check the service status.

systemctl restart httpd
systemctl status httpd -l

SELinux Status

To know the SELinux Status and current enforcement mode configured run the command; if the “SeLinux status” is enabled and current mode is set to “enforcing”; SELinux configuration is required else ignore these steps.

sestatus  | grep 'SELinux status\|Current mode'

Add Network port type

Since SELinux is enabled, next step is to add network type port type definitions for SELinux to authorize ports 80 – 82 for http traffic, run the command.

semanage port -d -t http_port_t -p tcp 80
semanage port -d -t http_port_t -p tcp 81
semanage port -d -t http_port_t -p tcp 82
semanage port -l | grep -w "http_port_t" or semanage port -l | grep http_port_t

Modify Security Group

Add new rules to the “Inbound rules” in the AWS Security group for all the ports that needs to access from outside.

Launch Websites

To demonstrate these settings and configuration is working, we will create a “index.html” file with a sample html content page as per the website numbers and different font colors.

Website #1

<HTML>
<BODY>
<TITLE> 1st website </TITLE>
<H1>
<FONT COLOR="brown"> This is First website's default page </H1>
</H1>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Website #2

<HTML>
<BODY>
<TITLE> 2nd website </TITLE>
<H1>
<FONT COLOR="green"> This is second website's default page </FONT>
</H1>
</FONT>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Website #3

<HTML>
<BODY>
<TITLE> 3rd website </TITLE>
<H1>
<FONT COLOR="blue"> This is third website's default page </FONT>
</H1>
</FONT>
</BODY>
</HTML>

SlideShare Information

A step by step guide with screenshot is uploaded.

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