Apache Internet Access

To make sure that you apache server is up and running point your browser to your external ip address. If you don’t know what it is, your going to have to login to your router to find it. Once you login to your router look for a status page, it will say the ip address. Most users have a dynamically assigned ip address therefore it will change occasionally, this is an interesting topic that I will discuss further later. But anyway, via this ip address you can access your web server. Type the ip address into a web browser address bar and BAM your default apache server page should show up. If it does not show, feel free to email me waterworksco@bgevolution.com and I will definitely try to help you out.

Setting up a router to work with apache

All routers have firewalls. They block all ports with a proper configuration. To get past this you must use port forwarding. First login to your router. Netgear routers you can login by typing the following ip address into a webbrowsers address bar “192.168.0.1″ . This should now ask you for your login name and password. If you have never setup your router its probably “username: admin” and “password: password”. You should change this immediately otherwise anyone that connect to your router can lock you out by accessing the configuration. I will not get into router configurations because there are soooo many but, port forwarding setup is my focus here. You must access port forwarding configuration, and set port 80 to be forwarded to the ip address of your server. I myself do a sloppy hack, instead of telling my server to grab a particular local ip address I simply use DHCP, and the router then is configured to spit out the exact same local ip address every time. Your server will have to have the same ip address every time it boots otherwise things will get confusing. Port forwarding configuration requests the port that you want to forward, the local ip address that you want to forward it to, and a title. Once you have successfully forwarded port 80 to the local ip address of the server apache can now be accessed via the internet.

Apache Configuration

Apache is essentially configured right out of the box to work on port 80 and a particular directory. When I set up my server I wanted the web root directory to be the users home directory for simplicity. The apache configuration file is either in /etc/httpd/httpd.conf or simply etc/httpd.conf. Youll have to open this file under the owner, which should be root for security purposes. If your not logged in as root, logout and re-login as root, or the preferred method is open a terminal window, type “su” enter the root password, then type “gedit /etc/httpd/httpd.conf” to edit the configuration file as root. Technically there is nothing that has to be changed in the file, but at least identify the root web directory. Search the configuration file for “DocumentRoot”. This line should be uncommented (no # symbol at the beginning of the line). You can set this to whatever you want it to be. I made it the same directory as my users home directory so when I login as my user on the desktop their is a nice “home” icon that will open the website directory. Obviously you can make a shortcut and put the web directory anywhere, but I wanted to coordinate things so I would not forget where the dam web directory was located.

A Quickie on how to easily install Apache

Obviously you can just download it from the main site, do a quick google search for apache and find, and download the .tgz files. Unzip, (./confgure), (make), (make install), and bam you got an apache server. The easiest method by far is either yum or apt-get. If you open a terminal window in root simply type “yum install httpd”, or “apt-get install httpd”, and apache will be auto installed. Yum is usually preinstall on most linux distributions (I know its on Fedora Core 6). Apt does essentially the same thing as yum, but I installed both for shits and giggles. If Apt is not pre-installed, and you want to install it, use “yum install apt”, and bam it will auto install.

These commands can only be used while logged in under root therefore if your logged in on a user first open the terminal window, then type “su”, enter the root password and you will then login as root and have full “yum” or “apt” control.

Server Setup Introduction (Apache)

Over the past several days I have been burning my brain setting up a full fledged server. It all starts with apache. I will talk about every aspect of each component that a server typically has beginning with apache. The first issue I encountered with apache was getting it through my computers firewall, and then the router. On linux, this is the situation; SELinux, is configurable graphically from the System tab, administration submenu, and the security level and firewall button. The first screen provides the port firewall, you must allow the http port, and if you want to configure it manually you have to allow port 80. Now click on the SELinux tab at the tob of the menu right next to the firewall tab. Within this tab is the SELinux permissions. Scroll down and expand the section httpd service. Within this section at minimum you should allow httpd to read home directories. By doing this you can set up your web server as the home directory of a user account, and therefore when you login to that user, you can edit all the material on the website. If you have any issues setting the SELinux parameters, first set it to permissive, then set the various parameters, then reset to enforcing. Close the box, then reopen, see if your changes have been saved, if not try again. This can be tricky, but usually SELinux does not like various parameters to be changed while in enforcing mode.