Page Last Updated: 2024 March 06

N.B. This page is awaiting a revamp as of July ‘23.

Notes on Apache Setup

First Steps:

We’ll need something to test with later on. Let’s ‘sudo apt-get install lynx.’

Lynx is a beautiful old browser. You’ll love it. Unless you’re a graphic designer, in which case it hates you, and you it.

  • Do apt-get update and upgrade
  • sudo apt-get install apache2
  • A lot of applications use apache’s ‘rewrite’ capability. Let’s make sure that’s on: sudo a2enmod rewrite
  • Restart in the manner it asks, but use sudo!

Initial Configuration

Now, we have to setup our hosts file so that our sites are registered properly with Apache (in these examples, I have chosen the hostname test.dev):

  • sudo nano /etc/hosts (You should see something like this) 
    127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       test.dev
127.0.1.1       test.test.dev   test

    Now, let’s configure that server to play nicely with our machine.

  • Go ahead and use sudo nano to open /etc/apache2/apache2.conf - This is a file you won’t have permissions to…

  • Scroll down to the bottom of the file. Add a line of blank space, then this: (Note: BE SUPER CAREFUL WITH WHITESPACE!)

    # User Customization
<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
    StartServers 2
    MinSpareServers 6
    MaxSpareServers 12
    MaxClients 30
    MaxRequestsPerChild 3000
</IfModule>
  • Save, open terminal, sudo service apache2 restart

Setup a Virtual Host

Ok, now, let’s go ahead and disable the default site and setup one of our own.

  • a2dissite 000-default.conf
  • restart apache

Now, we’re going to need a place to put our files… Let’s use /var/www/test.dev/public_html (mkdir -p to make a chain of dirs) - We’ll have to make that directory, as it doesn’t exist by default. Let’s also make /var/www/test.dev/logs

Now, let’s make /etc/apache2/sites-available/test.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    ServerName test.dev
    ServerAlias www.test.dev
    DocumentRoot /var/www/test.dev/public_html
    ErrorLog /var/www/test.dev/logs/error.log
    CustomLog /var/www/test.dev/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
  • Now, you’re ready to enable your site.
    • sudo a2ensite test.conf (This step takes the name of your conf file as an argument.)
    • restart apache

See also: