In today’s tutorial, you will learn how to set up Nginx as a reverse proxy for Apache, using Debian 11 OS. Make sure to follow the official documentation, if any issues arise in the meantime.

Prerequisites

• Server running Debian 11
• Root access to the server

Updating system and installing dependencies

Before starting, it’s hugely important to have your system up-to-date. So, you can run the following commands on your server to update it:

 apt-get update -y; apt-get upgrade -y 

After the system is updated, you need to install the dependencies:
apt-get install gnupg2 curl -y

Installing and configuring Apache

In this part, we’ll proceed with the Apache installation and configuration to run on port 8000. First of all, you need to install it with this command:
apt-get install apache2 -y

Once it’s installed, you need to edit the port from 80 to 8000 on the following files:
nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf
From: Listen 80
To: Listen 8000

nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf
From: 80
To: 8000

Now, we’ll restart apache to apply the changes:

systemctl restart apache2

And once it’s restarted, you should see the default page on the following link:
http://your-ip:8000

Installing and configuring Nginx.

Now, since we already have our Apache up and running on port 8000, we need to set up our Nginx as the reverse proxy to run on port 80 and proxy the traffic to port 8000. First of all, let’s install Nginx with:
apt-get install nginx -y

Then, once the installation is done, we need to empty the default vhost, so you can run this command:
echo "" > /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

After that, just open it and paste this content to redirect the accesses from port 80 (Nginx)
to 8000 (Apache2):

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8000;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

Then just save the file and check the Nginx for any syntax error with this command:
nginx -t

Next, just reload the Nginx service to apply our changes:
systemctl restart nginx

Now, once you access your IP address, you’ll be accessing your Nginx and being proxied to the Apache2 service.

And that’s it. You have successfully installed Nginx as a Reverse Proxy for Apache on Debian 11. Of course, if you have any Linux VPS hosting with us, you don’t need to do this installation. Our admins are available 24/7/365 to help you with those steps.

You will gain all the free benefits of fully managed hosting, including premium customer support, free and unlimited site migration, 99.99% uptime guaranteed, and many other features for your increased satisfaction.

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Apache Tomcat 10 or simply Tomcat 10 is a Java application server used to render the Java web pages. It is an open-source software developed by the Apache Software Foundation responsible to execute Java servlets and render the Java web pages as mentioned above.

Apache Tomcat 10 is compatible with multiple distributions of Linux as Ubuntu, CentOS, and Debian. Installing Tomcat 10 on Debian is very easy and will take less than 15 minutes with all requirements and configuration files.

Let’s start with the installation on Debian 10!

Prerequisites

• Fresh install of Debian 10
• User privileges: root or non-root user with sudo privileges
• Java 8 or higher version.
• VPS with at least 1GB of RAM

Check the distribution of your OS on your server before the installation.

lsb_release -a

The out should be similar to this:

root@vps:~# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Release: 10
Codename: buster

1. Updating the System

Execute the commands below to get the latest changes on your Debian 10 OS.

sudo apt update -y && sudo apt upgrade -y

2. Install Java

Apache Tomcat is based on Java, and that is why we need to install it first on the VPS:

sudo apt install default-jdk -y

Check the installed version with the following command:

java --version

The output should be similar to this:

root@vps:~# java --version
openjdk 11.0.12 2021-07-20
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 11.0.12+7-post-Debian-2deb10u1)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 11.0.12+7-post-Debian-2deb10u1, mixed mode, sharing)

3. Tomcat User Creation

In order for Apache Tomcat to run propely we need to create user:

useradd -m -d /opt/tomcat -U -s /bin/false tomcat

4. Downloading and installing Tomcat 10

First, go in /opt directory on your server (cd /opt) and then download the Tomcat within. Tomcat 10 can be downloaded from the official Apache website with the command below:

wget https://downloads.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-10/v10.0.10/bin/apache-tomcat-10.0.10.tar.gz

The next, step is to extract the archived file into a directory.

tar -xzvf apache-tomcat-10.0.10.tar.gz -C /opt/tomcat --strip-components=1

Once, the extraction is completed, set the right “tomcat” permissions recursively on the tomcat directory:

chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/tomcat/

Also, set the execute permissions on scripts in the bin directory of the tomcat installation:

chmod -R u+x /opt/tomcat/bin

5. Systemd Unit File for Tomcat

In the bin directory of Tomcat at /opt/tomcat/bin there are shell scripts for starting and stopping Tomcat. It is not recommended to start and stop Tomcat manually via these scripts thus it is recommended via system unit files. This way Tomcat will be able to start after system boot. Create a systemd file and paste the following lines into it:

nano /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service

[Unit]
Description="Tomcat Service"
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=forking
User=tomcat
Group=tomcat
Environment="JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64"
Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.security.egd=file:///dev/urandom"
Environment="CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat"
Environment="CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat"
Environment="CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat/temp/tomcat.pid"
Environment="CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512M -Xmx1024M -server -XX:+UseParallelGC"
ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save the file, close it and start the service.

systemctl start tomcat
systemctl enable tomcat

To check if the service is up and running execute the command:

systemctl status tomcat

The output will be similar to this:

root@vps:~# systemctl status tomcat
● tomcat.service - "Tomcat Service"
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2021-08-12 03:54:54 EDT; 4min 27s ago
Process: 17708 ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 17715 (java)
Tasks: 32 (limit: 4700)
Memory: 236.0M
CGroup: /system.slice/tomcat.service
└─17715 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64/bin/java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/opt/tomcat/conf/logging.properties -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.a

Now you can open the Tomcat GUI in your web browser via your server IP address and port 8080:

http://YOUR_IP_ADDRESS:8080

6. Configuration of Tomcat

Tomcat Manager is a place when you can easily deploy, list, and manage your applications. It has a nice GUI and is very intuitive to use. Later, you will need access to Tomcat Manager and in this step, we are going to enable it. Open the file:

nano /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml

And, add the following lines at the bottom before the line “”:

<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<role rolename="admin-gui"/>
<user username="admin" password="YourStrongPasswordHere" roles="manager-gui,admin-gui"/>

Save the file and close it. Now we need to allow access to Tomcat for WebApp and Host Managers:

nano /opt/tomcat/webapps/manager/META-INF/context.xml

Comment out the following lines

<!-- 
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" /> 
-->

nano /opt/tomcat/webapps/host-manager/META-INF/context.xml

<!-- 
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" /> 
-->

Save the files close it and restart the tomcat service:

systemctl restart tomcat

Now, refresh the tomcat page and you will be able to access the Manager App at http://162.246.248.185:8080/manager/html with the username and password set above. Congratulations! You successfully installed and configured Tomcat 10 on Debian 10. Now you can easily deploy Java applications and make them run in no time. Of course, if you find some difficulties while installing the app you do not have to install it by yourself. You can always contact our system admins and with their expertise, they will install Tomcat 10 for you. All you need to do is order an SSD VPS plan and contact our support. We are available 24/7.

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Apache Kafka is a free and open-source distributed streaming software platform that lets you publish and subscribe to streams of records and store streams of records in a fault-tolerant and durable manner. Apache Kafka is written in Scala and Java. Used in thousands of companies across the world, Apache Kafka provides anyone with the ability to create streaming and stream processing applications that can read and store data in real time. This has a variety of use cases – anything from logging, to messaging, to processing almost any sort of data stream you could imagine. Let’s get started with the installation.

In order to run Apache Kafka on your VPS, the following requirements have to be met:

• Java 8 or higher needs to be installed
• ZooKeeper installed and running on the server
• A VPS with at least 4GB of RAM

If you don’t have Java or ZooKeeper, don’t worry, we’ll be installing them in this tutorial as well.

Step 1 – Update OS Packages

Before we can start with the Apache Kafka installation, we have to make sure that all Debian OS packages that are installed on the server are up to date. We can do this by executing the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2 – Install JAVA

In order to run Apache Kafka on our server, we’ll need to have Java installed. We can check if Java is already installed using this command:

which java

If there is no output, that means that Java is not installed on the server yet. We can install it using the following command:

sudo apt-get install default-jdk

In order to check the Java version, run the following command on your server:

java -version

We should receive the following output:

openjdk version "1.8.0_181"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_181-8u181-b13-2~deb9u1-b13)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.181-b13, mixed mode)

Step 3 – Install Zookeeper

Kafka uses ZooKeeper to store persistent cluster metadata, so we need to install ZooKeeper. The ZooKeeper service is responsible for configuration management, leader detection, synchronization, etc. ZooKeeper is available in the official Debian package repository, so we can install it using the following command:

sudo apt-get install zookeeperd

ZooKeeper is running on port 2181 and it doesn’t require much maintenance.

Step 4 – Install Apache Kafka

Crate a new system user dedicated for the Kafka service using the following command (we’re using the kafka name for our username, you can use any name you like):

useradd kafka -m

Set a password for the newly created user:

passwd kafka

Use a strong password and enter it twice. Next, add the user to the sudo group with:

adduser kafka sudo

Stop the ZooKeeper service:

systemctl stop zookeeper.service

Log in as the newly created admin user with:

su kafka

Download the latest version of Apache Kafka available at https://kafka.apache.org/downloads and extract it in a directory on your server:

cd ~
wget -O kafka.tgz http://apache.osuosl.org/kafka/2.1.0/kafka_2.12-2.1.0.tgz
tar -xvzf kafka.tgz
mv kafka_2.12-2.1.0/* .
rmdir /home/kafka/kafka_2.12-2.1.0

Edit the ZooKeeper systemd script:

vi /lib/systemd/system/zookeeper.service

[Unit]
Requires=network.target remote-fs.target
After=network.target remote-fs.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=kafka
ExecStart=/home/kafka/bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh /home/kafka/config/zookeeper.properties
ExecStop=/home/kafka/bin/zookeeper-server-stop.sh
Restart=on-abnormal

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Create a systemd unit file for Apache Kafka, so that you can run Kafka as a service on your server:

vi /etc/systemd/system/kafka.service

Add the following lines:

[Unit]
Requires=network.target remote-fs.target zookeeper.service
After=network.target remote-fs.target zookeeper.service

[Service]
Type=simple
User=kafka
ExecStart=/home/kafka/bin/kafka-server-start.sh /home/kafka/config/server.properties
ExecStop=/home/kafka/bin/kafka-server-stop.sh
Restart=on-abnormal

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Edit the server.properties file and add/modify the following properties:

vi /home/kafka/config/server.properties

listeners=PLAINTEXT://:9092
log.dirs=/var/log/kafka

After we make changes to a unit file, we should always run the systemctl daemon-reload command:

systemctl daemon-reload

Create a new directory called kafka in the /var/log/ directory on your server:

mkdir -p /var/log/kafka

chown kafka:kafka -R /var/log/kafka

This can be useful for troubleshooting. Then, start the ZooKeeper and  Apache Kafka services:

systemctl start zookeeper.service
systemctl start kafka.service

Enable the Apache Kafka service to automatically start on server boot:

systemctl enable kafka.service

In order to check if ZooKeeper and Kafka services are up and running, run the following command on your VPS:

systemctl status zookeeper.service

We should then receive an output similar to this:

zookeeper.service
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/zookeeper.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Wed 2018-12-19 06:23:33 EST; 25min ago
Main PID: 20157 (java)
Tasks: 21 (limit: 4915)
CGroup: /system.slice/zookeeper.service
└─20157 java -Xmx512M -Xms512M -server -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=20 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=35 -XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrent -Djava.awt.headless=true -Xloggc:/home/kafka/bin/../l

Run this command next:

systemctl status kafka.service

The output of this command should be similar to this one:

kafka.service
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/kafka.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Wed 2018-12-19 06:46:49 EST; 27s ago
Process: 22520 ExecStop=/home/kafka/bin/kafka-server-stop.sh (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 22540 (java)
Tasks: 62 (limit: 4915)
CGroup: /system.slice/kafka.service
└─22540 java -Xmx1G -Xms1G -server -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=20 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=35 -XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrent -Djava.awt.headless=true -Xloggc:/home/kafka/bin/../logs/

We can also use netstat command to check if Kafka and ZooKeeper services are listening on ports 9092 and 2181, respectively:

netstat -tunlp | grep -e \:9092 -e \:2181
tcp6       0      0 :::9092                 :::*                    LISTEN      22540/java
tcp6       0      0 :::2181                 :::*                    LISTEN      20157/java

If they are both running, and both ports are open and listening, then that is all. We have successfully installed Apache Kafka.

Of course, you don’t have to install and configure Apache Kafka on Debian 9 if you use one of our Managed Debian Support solutions, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to setup and configure Apache Kafka on Debian 9 for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post on how to install Apache Kafka on a Debian 9 VPS, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

The post How to Install Apache Kafka on Debian 9 appeared first on LinuxHostSupport.

Apache Kafka is an open source messaging system and distributed streaming platform. It’s designed to be scalable, responsive, and provide an excellent experience when dealing with real-time data feeds. It’s great at providing real time analytics and processing of data – and thanks to its rich API support, developers can easily implement Apache Kafka and mold it to their exact needs.

Let’s begin with the installation.

Prerequisites:

Apache Kafka has the following requirements:

• Java 8 or higher installed on the server
• ZooKeeper installed and running on the server
• A server/VPS with a minimum of 4GB RAM.

Step 1. Connect to the Server

Log in to the server via SSH as user root using the following command:

ssh root@IP_ADDRESS -p PORT_NUMBER

replace “IP_ADDRESS” and “PORT_NUMBER” with your actual server IP address and SSH port number.

Step 2: Update OS Packages

Once logged in, make sure that your server OS packages are up-to-date by running the following commands:

yum clean all
yum update

Step 3: Install JAVA

Apache Kafka requires Java, so in order to run it on your server, we need to install Java first. We can check if Java is already installed on the server using this command:

which java

If there is no output, it means that Java is not installed on the server yet. We can install Java from a RPM package:

yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk.x86_64

We can check the Java version installed on the server by running the following command:

java -version

The output should be similar to this:

openjdk version "1.8.0_191"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_191-b12)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.191-b12, mixed mode)

Add the “JAVA_HOME” and “JRE_HOME” environment variables at the end of /etc/bashrc file:

sudo vi /etc/bashrc

Append the following lines to the original content of the file:

export JRE_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jre
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.8.0-openjdk
PATH=$PATH:$JRE_HOME:$JAVA_HOME

Open the ~/.bashrc file and make sure that the following lines exist:

if [ -f /etc/bashrc ] ; then
  . /etc/bashrc
fi

Run the following command to activate the path settings immediately:

source /etc/bashrc

Step 4: Install Apache Kafka

Create a new system user dedicated for the Kafka service using the following command:

useradd kafka -m

Set a password for the newly created user:

passwd kafka

Use a strong password and enter it twice. Then, run the following command on the server:

sudo usermod -aG wheel kafka

Log in as the newly created user with:

su kafka

Download the latest version of Apache Kafka available at https://kafka.apache.org/downloads and extract it in the home directory of the kafka user account:

cd ~
wget http://apache.osuosl.org/kafka/2.1.0/kafka_2.12-2.1.0.tgz
tar -xvzf kafka_2.12-2.1.0.tgz
mv kafka_2.12-2.1.0/* .
rmdir /home/kafka/kafka_2.12-2.1.0

Apache Kafka uses ZooKeeper to store persistent cluster metadata, so we need to install ZooKeeper. The ZooKeeper files are included with Apache Kafka. ZooKeeper is running on port 2181 and it doesn’t require much maintenance. The ZooKeeper service is responsible for configuration management, leader detection, synchronization, etc.
Create a ZooKeeper systemd unit file so that we can run ZooKeeper as a service:

sudo vi /lib/systemd/system/zookeeper.service

[Unit]
Requires=network.target remote-fs.target
After=network.target remote-fs.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=kafka
ExecStart=/home/kafka/bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh /home/kafka/config/zookeeper.properties
ExecStop=/home/kafka/bin/zookeeper-server-stop.sh
Restart=on-abnormal

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Create a systemd unit file for Apache Kafka:

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/kafka.service

Add the following lines:

[Unit]
Requires=network.target remote-fs.target zookeeper.service
After=network.target remote-fs.target zookeeper.service

[Service]
Type=simple
User=kafka
ExecStart=/home/kafka/bin/kafka-server-start.sh /home/kafka/config/server.properties
ExecStop=/home/kafka/bin/kafka-server-stop.sh
Restart=on-abnormal

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Edit the server.properties file and add/modify the following settings:

vi /home/kafka/config/server.properties

listeners=PLAINTEXT://:9092
log.dirs=/var/log/kafka-logs

After we make changes to a unit file, we should run the ‘systemctl daemon-reload‘ command for the changes to take effect:

systemctl daemon-reload

Create a new directory ‘kafka-logs’ in the ‘/var/log/‘ directory on your server:

sudo mkdir -p /var/log/kafka-logs

chown kafka:kafka -R /var/log/kafka-logs

This can be useful for troubleshooting. Once that’s done, start the ZooKeeper and Apache Kafka services:

sudo systemctl start zookeeper.service
sudo systemctl start kafka.service

Enable the ZooKeeper and Apache Kafka services to automatically start on server boot:

systemctl enable zookeeper.service

systemctl enable kafka.service

In order to check if ZooKeeper and Kafka services are up and running, run the following commands on the VPS:

systemctl status zookeeper.service

We should receive an output similar to this:

zookeeper.service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/zookeeper.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2019-01-25 12:42:42 CST; 16s ago
 Main PID: 11682 (java)
   CGroup: /system.slice/zookeeper.service
           └─11682 java -Xmx512M -Xms512M -server -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=20 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=35 -XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrent -Djava.awt.h...

systemctl status kafka.service

The output of this command should be similar to this one:

kafka.service
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/kafka.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2019-01-25 12:42:50 CST; 42s ago
 Main PID: 11991 (java)
   CGroup: /system.slice/kafka.service
           └─11991 java -Xmx1G -Xms1G -server -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=20 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=35 -XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrent -Djava.awt.headl...

We can also use the netstat command to check if Kafka and ZooKeeper services are listening on ports 9092 and 2181 respectively:

sudo netstat -tunlp | grep -e \:9092 -e \:2181
tcp6       0      0 :::9092                 :::*                    LISTEN      11991/java
tcp6       0      0 :::2181                 :::*                    LISTEN      11682/java

That is it. We successfully installed Apache Kafka.

Of course, you don’t have to install and configure Apache Kafka on CentOS 7, if you use one of our Fully Managed CentOS Support solutions, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to setup and configure Apache Kafka on CentOS 7 for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post on how to install Apache Kafka on a CentOS 7 VPS, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

The post How to Install Apache Kafka on CentOS 7 appeared first on LinuxHostSupport.

The Apache web server version that is available in the Debian 9 repositories has HTTP/2 support out of the box. Basically, when you install Apache web server on your Debian 9 VPS, you have the HTTP/2 module available to use. There is no need to install Apache from source like before when the earlier versions of HTTP/2 were not ready for production.

Enable HTTP/2 module in Apache

The HTTP/2 protocol is implemented by its own Apache module named mod_http2. To be able to use HTTP/2 in Apache you need to make sure the module is enabled. Connect to your server via SSH and run the following command to enable the HTTP/2 module in Apache:

a2enmod http2

You will see the following output:

# a2enmod http2
Enabling module http2.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  systemctl restart apache2

The output tells you that the module is enabled in Apache and that you need to restart the Apache service for the changes to take effect. To restart the Apache service, run the following command:

systemctl restart apache2

To make sure the module is enabled and ready to use make check the following file:

cat /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/http2.load

and make sure the following line is there:

LoadModule http2_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_http2.so

Or, simply use the following command and it will show you whether the module is enabled or not:

apache2ctl -M | grep http2

If it is enabled, the output will be similar to the following:

# apache2ctl -M | grep http2
 http2_module (shared)

Enable HTTP/2 in your Apache virtual host

Most browsers will speak HTTP/2 only via HTTPS which means your web server must have support for HTTPS and you need to have a valid SSL certificate installed. Otherwise, HTTP/2 will not work. To enable global support for HTTP/2 in Apache edit the default SSL virtual host configuration file using a text editor of your choice. We are using nano in our example:

nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl.conf

and add the following line after the opening <VirtualHost *:443> tag:

Protocols h2 h2c http/1.1

If you want to enable HTTP/2 for specific domain/website, add that line in the virtual host for that specific website. The virtual host for your domain should look like the following one:

<VirtualHost *:443>
    Protocols h2 h2c http/1.1
    ServerAdmin info@example.com
    ServerName www.example.com
    ServerAlias example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example.com

    SSLEngine On
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/example.com.crt
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key
    SSLCACertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

    <Directory /var/www/html/example.com/>
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
      AllowOverride All
      Order allow,deny
      allow from all
     </Directory>

    ErrorLog /var/www/html/example.com/log/error.log
    CustomLog /var/www/html/example.com/log/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Once you add the line related to protocols in your Apache virtual host file, you have to restart Apache again for the changes to take effect.

Please note, the order of protocols is relevant so the first one is the most preferred protocol when the client offers multiple choices. Here, h2 means HTTP/2 will be used over TLS (protocol negotiation via ALPN), while h2c means HTTP/s will be used over TCP. http/1.1 means that if the client doesn’t accept HTTP/2 then the request will be served over HTTP/1.1.

Verify that HTTP/2 support is enabled in Apache

To check whether HTTP/2 is successfully enabled in Apache you can use RoseHosting’s online HTTP/2 checker tool or any other similar tool available online.

Of course, you don’t have to set up Apache with HTTP/2 support on Debian 9, if you use one of our Linux Server Management Services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to set up Apache with HTTP/2 support on Debian 9 for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post on how to set up Apache with HTTP/2 support on Debian 9, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

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What is virtual host?

Virtual host is used to host a number of websites on the same web server. The web server could be Apache, nginx, Litespeed, etc. Apache supports two types of virtual host:

Name based virtual hosts
IP based virtual hosts

The name based virtual host is commonly used to host multiple websites on the same server, whereas in IP based virtual host we can only configure one website on one IP address. In this tutorial, we will show you how to create name based virtual hosts. We will host domainone.com and domaintwo.com on a server, please replace them with your actual domain names.

How to create virtual host

Let’s SSH in to the server and proceed to the next step.

ssh root@Your_IP_Address -p7022

Create directory for domains’ webroot

mkdir -p /var/www/html/{domainone.com,domaintwo.com}/{public_html,logs}

The command above will create four directories, two of them will be our domains’ document root, and the other tw will be used to store our apache log files:

/var/www/html/domainone.com/public_html
/var/www/html/domaintwo.com/public_html
/var/www/html/domainone.com/logs
/var/www/html/domaintwo.com/logs

Create test pages

Now, let’s create a test page for domainone.com

nano /var/www/html/domainone.com/public_html/index.html

<html>
<body>
<center><h1>This is domainone.com!</h1></center>
</body>
</html>

Save and exit nano with Ctrl + O then Ctrl + X

Let’s copy the index test page to domaintwo.com

cp /var/www/html/domainone.com/public_html/index.html /var/www/html/domaintwo.com/public_html/

Okay, the index test page has been copied, but we need to edit the index page for domaintwo.com

sed -i 's/domainone.com/domaintwo.com/g' /var/www/html/domaintwo.com/public_html/index.html

We have successfully created an index test page for both domain names. Let’s give permission to user www-data, the default user who runs the apache.

chown -R www-data: /var/www/html/

Create a virtual host

Now, let’s create a virtual host configuration file for domainone.com. The virtual host configuration file should be ended with .conf extension

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/domainone.com.conf

ServerAdmin admin@domainone.com
ServerName domainone.com
ServerAlias www.domainone.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/domainone.com/public_html

ErrorLog /var/www/html/domainone.com/logs/error.log
CustomLog /var/www/html/domainone.com/logs/access.log combined

The virtual host configuration file for domainone.com has been created, now we only need to copy and edit it for domaintwo.com

cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/domainone.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/domaintwo.com.conf

sed -i 's/domainone.com/domaintwo.com/g' /etc/apache2/sites-available/domaintwo.com.conf

We will give you a short explanation about the content of virtual host configuration file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
The virtual host is listening on port 80

ServerAdmin admin@domainone.com

The ServerAdmin sets the contact address that the server includes in any error messages it returns to the client. You can specify your email address here, or even remove the line.

ServerName domainone.com
ServerAlias www.domainone.com

This directive is needed, it tells Apache that Apache will process the domain request. Apache will search for virtual host files and process all request if domain/subdomain match with the one configured on ServerName or ServerAlias directive.

DocumentRoot /var/www/html/domainone.com/public_html

This directive is also important, we need to tell Apache where the document root of domaincone.com is. If we don’t specify it, apache will load the default document root, which is in /var/www/html

ErrorLog and CustomLog are the directives to save the log of a domain name hosted on the server.

Enable virtual host

In Ubuntu, we can simply issue the following commands to enable the virtual hosts

a2ensite domainone.com
a2ensite domaintwo.com

Those commands will enable the virtual hosts, but we also need to reload/restart Apache after enabling/disabling the virtual host. The command actually creates a symbolic link in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled. You can also run the following commands instead of invoking the ‘a2ensite’ command:

ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/domainone.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/domaintwo.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

Now, restart apache to activate the new configuration.

systemctl restart apache2

That is all, we successfully created two Apache virtual hosts for the two domains. You can now open your web browser and navigate to the domain name of the newly created virtual hosts.

http://domainone.com

http://domaintwo.com

Of course, you don’t need to set up Apache Virtual Hosts on Ubuntu 16.04, if you use one of our Linux Server Management Services – in which case, our technical support team will help you creating the virtual hosts immediately. They are available 24/7, and can cater to any questions or requests.

PS. If you liked this post on How to set up Apache Virtual Hosts on Ubuntu 16.04, feel free to share it with your friends by using the social media share shortcuts below, or simply leave a comment. Thanks.

The post How to set up Apache Virtual Hosts on Ubuntu 16.04 appeared first on LinuxHostSupport.

1. Update the system

As usual make sure the system is fully up to date before installing any packages:

# yum -y update

2. Install Apache

We are going to use Apache as our web server, install it using this command:

# yum -y install httpd

3. Install mod_ssl

Install mod_ssl as well as we are going to need it to configure our Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate:

# yum -y install mod_ssl

4. Configure Apache

Create a document root folder for your site:

# mkdir /var/www/test

Create a virtual host config file for your site by opening it with nano and then pasting the following contents inside:

# nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/test-site.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@test.com
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/test"
    ServerName test.com
    ServerAlias www.test.com
    ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/test.error_log"
    CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/test.access_log" common
</VirtualHost>

Add a index.html file for testing purposes later with the following contents:

# nano /var/www/test/index.html

It works!

Change owner of the “/var/www/test” directory to the apache user so Apache can read the directory:

# chown -R apache:apache /var/www/test

Remember to change “test” for your site’s name.
Now that we have Apache installed we can continue by installing certbot.

5. Install certbot

To install certbot first we need to make sure we have the EPEL repository enabled, to do that execute the following command:

# yum -y install epel-release

Make sure yum-utils is installed:

# yum -y install yum-utils

Then install certbot for Apache:

# yum -y install certbot-apache

Now that we have certbot installed, run certbot with the following command:

# certbot --apache

Certbot will ask you for the names you would like to activate HTTPS for:

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Plugins selected: Authenticator apache, Installer apache
Starting new HTTPS connection (1): acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org

Which names would you like to activate HTTPS for?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: test.com
2: www.test.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Select the appropriate numbers separated by commas and/or spaces, or leave input
blank to select all options shown (Enter 'c' to cancel):

Press enter to continue and then optionally if you want you can redirect your sites to HTTPS:

Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: No redirect - Make no further changes to the webserver configuration.
2: Redirect - Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for
new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS. You can undo this
change by editing your web server's configuration.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel):

If everything goes well you should see the following output:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations! You have successfully enabled
https://test.com and https://www.test.com

You should test your configuration at:
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=test.com
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.test.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6. Configure automatic renewal

Now we are going to add a cronjob so our Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates can be renewed automatically.

First run the following command so we can have nano as the default editor:

# export EDITOR=/bin/nano

Then execute the following command to edit the crontab:

# crontab -e

Let’s Encrypt recommends the automatic renew cronjob to run twice a day, to do that add the following line and then save and exit the crontab:

* */12 * * * /usr/bin/certbot renew >/dev/null 2>&1

Now you should have successfully installed and configured Let’s Encrypt with Apache.

Of course you don’t have to install Let’s Encrypt on CentOS 7 with Apache, if you use one of our outsourced Linux server support services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate on your server with Apache. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post, on how to install Let’s Encrypt on CentOS 7 with Apache, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

The post How to install Let’s Encrypt on CentOS 7 with Apache appeared first on LinuxHostSupport.

1. Requirements

In order to start with the installation procedure, you need to have Apache or Nginx installed on your server. If there is no web server installed on your virtual server, please follow this tutorial to install Apache.
Also, you need a registered domain name with its A record pointing to your server’s IP address.  For the purposes of this tutorial, we will use ‘yourdomain.com’.

2. Install CertBot

Run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-certbot-apache

3. Install Let’s Encrypt SSL

Install Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate on your domain (do not forget to replace ‘yourdomain.com’ with your actual domain):

sudo certbot --apache -d yourdomain.com

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Plugins selected: Authenticator apache, Installer apache
Enter email address (used for urgent renewal and security notices) (Enter 'c' to
cancel): admin@yourdomain.com 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please read the Terms of Service at
https://letsencrypt.org/documents/LE-SA-v1.2-November-15-2017.pdf. You must
agree in order to register with the ACME server at
https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(A)gree/(C)ancel: A

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Would you be willing to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a founding partner of the Let's Encrypt project and the non-profit
organization that develops Certbot? We'd like to send you email about EFF and
our work to encrypt the web, protect its users and defend digital rights.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Y)es/(N)o: N

Obtaining a new certificate
Performing the following challenges:
tls-sni-01 challenge for linuxhostsupport.com
Waiting for verification...
Cleaning up challenges
Created an SSL vhost at /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf
Deploying Certificate for yourdomain.com to VirtualHost /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf
Enabling available site: /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf

4. Redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS

Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: No redirect - Make no further changes to the webserver configuration.
2: Redirect - Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for
new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS. You can undo this
change by editing your web server's configuration.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel): 2
Redirecting vhost in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf to ssl vhost in /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations! You have successfully enabled https://yourdomain.com

5. Renew the SSL certificate with a cron job

Create a cron job so the SSL certificate is renewed automatically. Run:

crontab -e

and add the following line:

0 0 1 * * /usr/bin/letsencrypt renew >> /var/log/letsencrypt-renew.log

Save and close that file and restart cron service for the changes to take effect:

service cron restart

Open https://yourdomain.com in your favorite web browser, and check whether Let’s Encrypt SSL is installed properly:

That is it. Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate has been successfully installed on your website.

Of course you don’t have to Install Let’s Encrypt with Apache on Ubuntu 16.04, if you use one of our Linux Server Support services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to  install Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate on Ubuntu 16.04 for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post on How to Install Let’s Encrypt with Apache on Ubuntu 16, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

The post How to Install Let’s Encrypt with Apache on Ubuntu 16.04 appeared first on LinuxHostSupport.