How to Configure Apache Web Server on Linux
I've shown previously how to install a LAMP server in Ubuntu. If the purpose of your LAMP installation was to set up your own web development environment, then you may want to do some further configuration to your system. This Apache howto is not intended to cover Apache configuration in depth. This is just some basic configuration to help you set up a web development environment in Linux. For more information, see the official Apache documentation.
Why Change the Apache Configuration?
By default, Apache is set up for your web site's files to be in the /var/www directory. This is fine if you only want to work on one website and access it through http://localhost/. But what if you want to work on several websites at the same time? Well, one solution is to create different directories under /var/www like /var/www/site1 and then access it through http://localhost/site1/. I prefer a more elegant solution.
I prefer to build websites in a directory under my own ID. I can then configure the Apache http server to point to the site directories with URLs like http://site1/, http://site2/, etc.
Creating a Web Development Directory
Lets start off by creating a folder structure for the development environment. You can do this from your file manager. I prefer the terminal.
mkdir webdev
cd webdev
mkdir site1 site2
We now have a directory called webdev under our home directory. Within the webdev directory are two directories called site1 and site2.
Create Some Test Files
Now we're going to create some basic test files so that we know our Apache configuration worked. Again, I'm going to use the terminal to create these files, but feel free to use your favorite text editor.
echo 'Site1 works!' > index.html
cd ../site2
echo 'Site2 works!' > index.html
Enable the Sites in Apache
OK, we're now ready to do the actual Apache configuration. Go to /etc/apache2/sites-available.
As root, copy the default file as site1.
Repeat the process to create a site2 file.
As root, edit the site1 configuration file.
Edit the file to look like this (the changes are in bold).
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName site1
DocumentRoot /home/yourID/webdev/site1/
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /home/yourID/webdev/site1/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
<Directory "/usr/share/doc/">
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Note: The line that changes AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All is required if you want to enable URL re-writes through a .htaccess file. You need this if you want to utilize pretty permalinks in WordPress.
You now need to enable your new site.
You should get a message telling you that you need to reload Apache to activate the new configuration. But first you need to edit your /etc/hosts file.
Edit the first line adding site1 to the end of the line so it looks something like this and save the file.
127.0.0.1 localhost site1
You can now reload Apache.
Site1 is now enabled. Check it by browsing to http://site1/. If everything worked right, you should see a web page that says "Site1 works!"
Repeat the procedure to enable site2, etc.
Edit 12-Dec-09
If you get an error like “apache2: Could not determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for localhost,” you can fix it with this command.
echo "ServerName localhost" | sudo tee /etc/apache2/conf.d/fqdnThen, reload Apache to eliminate the error.
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reloadComments
122 Responses to “How to Configure Apache Web Server on Linux”
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HI.Thanks for the great tutorial.
Whenever i reload apache2 i get the following:
* Reloading web server config apache2 [Sat Nov 26 19:42:10 2011] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:0 has no VirtualHosts
[Sat Nov 26 19:42:10 2011] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:0 has no VirtualHosts
Also i am not able to send "PUT" requests via any REST client(for eg Google Chrome has an extension for the same)
Your virtual host file should refer to *:80 for port 80, not *:0.
Great tutorial. I'm new to this stuff. Did the same thing for site2 as suggested but it didn't work! It generated the index.html output from /var/www/ instead. I think the tutorial needed to be a little more concise with regards to site2. Checked my scripts to ensure that there were no typo's. Should the first line in /etc/hosts read "127.0.0.1 localhost site1 site2" for instance?
"Should the first line in /etc/hosts read "127.0.0.1 localhost site1 site2" for instance?"
No, each site requires a new line so instead of "127.0.0.1 localhost site1 site2" it should be:
127.0.0.1 localhost site1
127.0.0.1 localhost site2
You just repeat the steps you did to create site1 in order to create site2, site3, etc. except you add a line in /etc/hosts for each new site. Also, your site name can be pretty much any name you want (it doesn't have to be "site1").
Hi,Thanks for the wonderful tutorial.If i wish to view say index.html under site1 from another computer connected over LAN,how can i do that.
So from my other computer if i fire http://site1/index.html it should render the contents
Hi there,
I did it exactly the way you explained, and everything has been set up right. The only problem happened in the end ..
phpmyadmin could not be found ... i've got an 404 error, even with the "success" message at the end of installation "ldconfig deferred processing now taking place"
what could be the error?
Thanks that much ..
hugs from Brazil
Look at this post: http://tuxtweaks.com/2011/10/install-lamp-and-phpmyadmin-on-ubuntu-11-10/
and find the section near the bottom that refers to Fixing phpMyAdmin.
Hello again,
I checked each step , and everything looks good. testing.php and phpmyadmin run smoothly. the only thing when I try to execute install.php, the browser stop and blank.
Can you please advise? I did change the /etc/apache2/sites-available/[sitename] ,
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All ( and also to AuthConfig>
Order allow,deny
allow from all
restart the apache, and still not working. pls anyone can help?
What is install.php? What is is supposed to do?
MANY MANY THANKS. 5:00 was trying to make a virtual host on a pile of manuals, only your fully working. Thank you!