Apache HTTP server is the most popular web server in the world. It is a free, open-source and cross-platform HTTP server providing powerful features which can be extended by a wide variety of modules. The following instructions describe how to install and manage the Apache web server on your CentOS 7 machine.
Prerequisites
Before starting with the tutorial, make sure you are logged in as a user with sudo privileges.
Installing Apache
Apache is available in the default CentOS repositories and the installation is pretty straight forward.
On CentOS and RHEL the Apache package and the service is called httpd
. To install the package run the following command:
sudo yum install httpd
Once the installation is completed, enable and start the Apache service:
sudo systemctl enable httpd
sudo systemctl start httpd
Adjusting the Firewall
If your server is protected by a firewall you need to open HTTP and HTTPS ports, 80
and 443
. Use the following commands to open the necessary ports:
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload
Verifying Apache Installation
Now that we have Apache installed and running on our CentOS 7 server we can check the status and the version of the Apache service, with:
sudo systemctl status httpd
● httpd.service - The Apache HTTP Server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2018-04-26 07:13:07 UTC; 11s ago
Docs: man:httpd(8)
man:apachectl(8)
Main PID: 3049 (httpd)
Status: "Total requests: 0; Current requests/sec: 0; Current traffic: 0 B/sec"
CGroup: /system.slice/httpd.service
├─3049 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─3050 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─3051 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─3052 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─3053 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
└─3054 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
sudo httpd -v
Server version: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS)
Server built: Oct 19 2017 20:39:16
Finally to verify if everything works properly, open your server IP address http://YOUR_IP
in your browser of choice, and you will see the default CentOS 7 Apache welcome page as shown below:
Managing Apache Service
You can manage the Apache service in the same way as any other systemd unit.
To stop the Apache service, run:
sudo systemctl stop httpd
To start it again, type:
sudo systemctl start httpd
To restart the Apache service:
sudo systemctl restart httpd
To reload the Apache service after you made some configuration changes:
sudo systemctl reload httpd
If you want to disable the Apache service to start at boot:
sudo systemctl disable httpd
And to re-enable it again:
sudo systemctl enable httpd
Apache Configuration File’s Structure and Best Practices
- All Apache configuration files are located in the
/etc/httpd
directory. - The main Apache configuration file is
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
. - All config files ending with
.conf
located in the/etc/httpd/conf.d
directory are included in main Apache configuration file. - Configuration files which are responsible for loading various Apache modules are located in the
/etc/httpd/conf.modules.d
directory. - For better maintainability it is recommended to create a separate configuration file (vhost) for each domain.
- New Apache vhost files must end with
.conf
and be stored in/etc/httpd/conf.d
directory. You can have as many vhosts as you need. - It is a good idea to follow a standard naming convention, for example if your domain name is
mydomain.com
then you the configuration file should be named/etc/httpd/conf.d/mydomain.com.conf
- Apache log files (
access_log
anderror_log
) are located in the/var/log/httpd/
directory. It is recommended to have a differentaccess
anderror
log files for each vhost. - You can set your domain document root directory to any location you want. The most common locations for webroot include:
/home/
/ /var/www/
/var/www/html/
/opt/
Conclusion
You have successfully installed Apache on your CentOS 7 server. You’re now ready to start deploying your applications and use Apache as a web or proxy server.
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment.