In this post, we will show you how to install Varnish 7 on AlmaLinux.

Prerequisites

• An AlmaLinux VPS with root access enabled or a user with sudo privileges.

Log in via SSH and Update your System

First, you will need to log in to your AlmaLinux VPS via SSH as the root user:

ssh root@IP_ADDRESS -p PORT_NUMBER
Next, run the following commands to upgrade all installed packages on your VPS:

dnf update -y

Once all the packages are updated, restart your system to apply the changes.

Add Varnish Repo

By default, the latest version of Varnish is not included in the AlmaLinux default repo. So you will need to disable the default Varnish repo. You can disable it with the following command:

dnf module disable varnish

You will get the following output:

AlmaLinux - AppStream                                                                                     5.6 MB/s | 9.7 MB     00:01    
AlmaLinux - BaseOS                                                                                        8.8 MB/s | 6.8 MB     00:00    
AlmaLinux - Extras                                                                                         28 kB/s |  12 kB     00:00    
Dependencies resolved.
==============================================================================================================================================
 Package                           Architecture                     Version                           Repository                         Size
==============================================================================================================================================
Disabling modules:
 varnish                                                                                                                                     

Transaction Summary
==============================================================================================================================================

Is this ok [y/N]: y
Complete!

Next, install the EPEL repository and add the Varnish 7 repo with the following command:

dnf install epel-release -y
curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/varnishcache/varnish70/script.rpm.sh | bash -

Install Varnish 7

Now, you can run the following command to install the Varnish 7 on your server.

dnf install varnish -y

Once the Varnish is installed, you can verify the Varnish version using the following command:

rpm -qi varnish

You will get the Varnish package information in the following output:

Name        : varnish
Version     : 7.0.2
Release     : 1.el8
Architecture: x86_64
Install Date: Wednesday 06 April 2022 03:21:17 PM UTC
Group       : System Environment/Daemons
Size        : 8907085
License     : BSD
Signature   : (none)
Source RPM  : varnish-7.0.2-1.el8.src.rpm
Build Date  : Wednesday 12 January 2022 02:25:34 PM UTC
Build Host  : 7fc509e75620
Relocations : (not relocatable)
URL         : https://www.varnish-cache.org/
Summary     : High-performance HTTP accelerator
Description :
This is Varnish Cache, a high-performance HTTP accelerator.

Manage Varnish Service

By default, the Varnish service is managed by systemd. You can start the Varnish service with the following command:

systemctl start varnish

To enable the Varnish service, run the following command:

systemctl enable varnish

To check the status of the Varnish service, run the following command:

systemctl status varnish

You will get the following output:

● varnish.service - Varnish Cache, a high-performance HTTP accelerator
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/varnish.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2022-04-06 15:21:40 UTC; 6s ago
  Process: 25005 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd -a :6081 -a localhost:8443,PROXY -p feature=+http2 -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -s malloc,256m (>
 Main PID: 25006 (varnishd)
    Tasks: 217
   Memory: 108.5M
   CGroup: /system.slice/varnish.service
           ├─25006 /usr/sbin/varnishd -a :6081 -a localhost:8443,PROXY -p feature=+http2 -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -s malloc,256m
           └─25017 /usr/sbin/varnishd -a :6081 -a localhost:8443,PROXY -p feature=+http2 -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -s malloc,256m

Apr 06 15:21:39 rockylinux systemd[1]: Starting Varnish Cache, a high-performance HTTP accelerator...
Apr 06 15:21:40 rockylinux varnishd[25006]: Version: varnish-7.0.2 revision 9b5f68e19ca0ab60010641e305fd12822f18d42c
Apr 06 15:21:40 rockylinux varnishd[25006]: Platform: Linux,4.18.0-348.12.2.el8_5.x86_64,x86_64,-junix,-smalloc,-sdefault,-hcritbit
Apr 06 15:21:40 rockylinux varnishd[25006]: Child (25017) Started
Apr 06 15:21:40 rockylinux varnishd[25006]: Child (25017) said Child starts
Apr 06 15:21:40 rockylinux systemd[1]: Started Varnish Cache, a high-performance HTTP accelerator.

Configure Varnish

By default, Varnish listens on port 6081. You can check it with the following command:

ss -antpl | grep varnish

You will get the following output:

LISTEN 0      128          0.0.0.0:6081       0.0.0.0:*    users:(("cache-main",pid=25017,fd=6),("varnishd",pid=25006,fd=6))
LISTEN 0      128             [::]:6081          [::]:*    users:(("cache-main",pid=25017,fd=7),("varnishd",pid=25006,fd=7))

Now, you will need to configure Varnish to listen on port 80. You can do it by editing the Varnish configuration file:

nano /usr/lib/systemd/system/varnish.service

Replace the port 6081 with 80 as shown below:

ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd \
          -a :80 \
          -a localhost:8443,PROXY \
          -p feature=+http2 \
          -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl \
          -s malloc,2g

Save and close the file then reload the systemd daemon to apply the changes:

systemctl daemon-reload

Next, you will also need to edit the Varnish VCL configuration file and define your Nginx backend.

nano /etc/varnish/default.vcl

Define your Nginx backend as shown below:

backend default {
    .host = "127.0.0.1";
    .port = "8080";
}

Save and close the file when you are finished.

Note: Replace 127.0.0.1 with your Nginx web server IP.

Configure Varnish for Nginx

First, install the Nginx web server package with the following command:

dnf install nginx -y

Once the Nginx is installed, you will need to edit the Nginx configuration file and change the listen port from 80 to 8080:

nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Change the default port from 80 to 8080:

    listen       8080 default_server;
        listen       [::]:8080 default_server;

Save and close the file then restart the Nginx service to apply the changes:

systemctl restart nginx

Finally, restart the Varnish service to apply the changes:

systemctl restart varnish

Verify Varnish

At this point, Varnish is installed and configured to work with Nginx. Now it’s time to verify it.

You can verify it using the curl command as shown below:

curl -I http://your-server-ip

If everything is fine, you will get the following output:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.14.1
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2022 15:25:48 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 3429
Last-Modified: Thu, 10 Jun 2021 09:09:03 GMT
ETag: "60c1d6af-d65"
X-Varnish: 2
Age: 0
Via: 1.1 varnish (Varnish/7.0)
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Connection: keep-alive

Of course, if you are one of our Linux VPS hosting customers, you don’t have to install Varnish 7 on your AlmaLinux VPS – simply ask our admins, sit back, and relax. Our admins will install Varnish 7 on AlmaLinux for you immediately.

PS. If you liked this post about how to install Varnish 7 on AlmaLinux VPS, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons below, or simply leave a comment in the comments section. Thanks.

The post How to Install Varnish 7 on AlmaLinux appeared first on LinuxHostSupport.

• PHP 5.5.9 or higher (preferably PHP 7.0), with GD library, JSON, cURL, mysqli , Mbstring, DOM, OpenSSL and XML PHP extensions enabled. PHP 7.2 is not supported on the current release.
• MySQL – 5.5.3 (MariaDB 5.5.20, Percona 5.5.8) or higher with an InnoDB-compatible primary storage engine, PostgreSQL – 9.1.2 or higher, or QLite – 3.6.8 or higher
• Apache web server 2.2 or higher compiled with mod_rewrite module and AllowOverride set to ‘All’ (please note, the default setting for AllowOverride in Apache 2.3.9 and higher is ‘None’).

This install guide assumes that Apache and MySQL/MariaDB are already installed and configured on your virtual server.
Let’s start with the installation procedure.

1. Update the System Packages

Make sure your server Debian 9 OS packages are fully up-to-date:

apt-get update 
apt-get upgrade

2. Install the Required Packages

Install the required PHP packages for Drupal 8:

apt-get install php7.0 php7.0-cli php7.0-common php7.0-mbstring php7.0-curl php7.0-gd php7.0-json php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-mysql php7.0-xml

3. Enable Apache Rewrite Module

Enable Apache rewrite module if it is not already done so:

a2enmod rewrite

4. Restart Apache

Restart the Apache service for the changes to take effect:

service apache2 restart

5. Download and Extract Drupal 8 Files

Download Drupal 8 and install if from source, or install Drupal 8 using Composer.

5.1 Download Drupal 8 from source

Download the latest version of Drupal available at https://www.drupal.org/download in the /opt/ directory on the server:

cd /opt/
mkdir -p /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/
wget -O drupal8.tar.gz https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-8.4.4.tar.gz
tar -xvzf drupal*
mv drupal-*/* /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/

5.2 Download and Install Drupal 8 using Composer – a PHP dependency manager

If you downloaded and extracted Drupal from source, you can skip this step and go to step 6.
Install Composer:

apt-get install composer

mkdir -p /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/
cd /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/

To install the Drupal 8 website on a development server, run:

composer create-project drupal-composer/drupal-project:8.x-dev /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/ --stability dev --no-interaction

Optionally, install Twig C extension:

composer require twig/twig:~1.0

To install the Drupal 8 website on a production server, you also need to run:

composer install --no-dev

This will run the composer install process again remove everyhing from the “require-dev” section from the composer.lock file.

6. Set Proper Ownership of Drupal Files

All files have to be readable by the web server, so set a proper ownership:

chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/

7. Create MySQL Database and User

Create a new MySQL database and user:

mysql -u root -p
mysql> SET GLOBAL sql_mode='';
mysql> CREATE DATABASE drupaldb;
mysql> CREATE USER 'drupaluser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'y0uR-pa5sW0rd';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON drupaldb.* TO 'drupaluser'@'localhost';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit

Do not forget to replace ‘y0uR-pa5sW0rd’ with a strong password.

8. Install and Configure Varnish

apt-get install varnish

Configure Varnish to listen on port 80. Edit the ‘/etc/default/varnish’ Varnish configuration file:

nano etc/default/varnish

Add these lines at the end:

DAEMON _OPTS="-a :80\
  -T localhost:6082
  -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl
  -s malloc,512m"
  -S /etc/varnish/secret

Create a new varnish startup script for systemd:

nano /etc/systemd/system/varnish.service

[Unit]
Description=Varnish HTTP accelerator
Documentation=https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/4.1/ man:varnishd

[Service]
Type=simple
LimitNOFILE=131072
LimitMEMLOCK=82000
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd -j unix,user=vcache -F -a :80 -T localhost:6082 -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,512m
ProtectSystem=full
ProtectHome=true
PrivateTmp=true
PrivateDevices=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Run the following command to reload systemd manager configuration:

systemctl daemon-reload

Back up default.vcl:

mv /etc/varnish/default.vcl /etc/varnish/default.vcl.bak

Create a new default.vcl file (do not forget to change yourdomain.com with the actual domain name):

nano /etc/varnish/default.vcl

Add these lines

backend default {

.host = “yourdomain.com“;

.port = “8080”;

}

# Access control list for PURGE requests.
# Here you need to put the IP address of your web server
acl purge {
“127.0.0.1”;
}

# Respond to incoming requests.
sub vcl_recv {
# Add an X-Forwarded-For header with the client IP address.
if (req.restarts == 0) {
if (req.http.X-Forwarded-For) {
set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = req.http.X-Forwarded-For + “, ” + client.ip;
}
else {
set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = client.ip;
}
}

# Only allow PURGE requests from IP addresses in the ‘purge’ ACL.
if (req.method == “PURGE”) {
if (!client.ip ~ purge) {
return (synth(405, “Not allowed.”));
}
return (hash);
}

# Only allow BAN requests from IP addresses in the ‘purge’ ACL.
if (req.method == “BAN”) {
# Same ACL check as above:
if (!client.ip ~ purge) {
return (synth(403, “Not allowed.”));
}

# Logic for the ban, using the Cache-Tags header. For more info
# see https://github.com/geerlingguy/drupal-vm/issues/397.
if (req.http.Cache-Tags) {
ban(“obj.http.Cache-Tags ~ ” + req.http.Cache-Tags);
}
else {
return (synth(403, “Cache-Tags header missing.”));
}

# Throw a synthetic page so the request won’t go to the backend.
return (synth(200, “Ban added.”));
}

# Only cache GET and HEAD requests (pass through POST requests).
if (req.method != “GET” && req.method != “HEAD”) {
return (pass);
}

# Pass through any administrative or AJAX-related paths.
if (req.url ~ “^/status\.php$” ||
req.url ~ “^/update\.php$” ||
req.url ~ “^/admin$” ||
req.url ~ “^/admin/.*$” ||
req.url ~ “^/flag/.*$” ||
req.url ~ “^.*/ajax/.*$” ||
req.url ~ “^.*/ahah/.*$”) {
return (pass);
}

# Removing cookies for static content so Varnish caches these files.
if (req.url ~ “(?i)\.(pdf|asc|dat|txt|doc|xls|ppt|tgz|csv|png|gif|jpeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?.*)?$”) {
unset req.http.Cookie;
}

# Remove all cookies that Drupal doesn’t need to know about. We explicitly
# list the ones that Drupal does need, the SESS and NO_CACHE. If, after
# running this code we find that either of these two cookies remains, we
# will pass as the page cannot be cached.
if (req.http.Cookie) {
# 1. Append a semi-colon to the front of the cookie string.
# 2. Remove all spaces that appear after semi-colons.
# 3. Match the cookies we want to keep, adding the space we removed
# previously back. (\1) is first matching group in the regsuball.
# 4. Remove all other cookies, identifying them by the fact that they have
# no space after the preceding semi-colon.
# 5. Remove all spaces and semi-colons from the beginning and end of the
# cookie string.
set req.http.Cookie = “;” + req.http.Cookie;
set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, “; +”, “;”);
set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, “;(SESS[a-z0-9]+|SSESS[a-z0-9]+|NO_CACHE)=”, “; \1=”);
set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, “;[^ ][^;]*”, “”);
set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, “^[; ]+|[; ]+$”, “”);

if (req.http.Cookie == “”) {
# If there are no remaining cookies, remove the cookie header. If there
# aren’t any cookie headers, Varnish’s default behavior will be to cache
# the page.
unset req.http.Cookie;
}
else {
# If there is any cookies left (a session or NO_CACHE cookie), do not
# cache the page. Pass it on to Apache directly.
return (pass);
}
}
}

# Set a header to track a cache HITs and MISSes.
sub vcl_deliver {
# Remove ban-lurker friendly custom headers when delivering to client.
unset resp.http.X-Url;
unset resp.http.X-Host;
# Comment these for easier Drupal cache tag debugging in development.
unset resp.http.Cache-Tags;
unset resp.http.X-Drupal-Cache-Contexts;

if (obj.hits > 0) {
set resp.http.Cache-Tags = “HIT”;
}
else {
set resp.http.Cache-Tags = “MISS”;
}
}

# Instruct Varnish what to do in the case of certain backend responses (beresp).
sub vcl_backend_response {
# Set ban-lurker friendly custom headers.
set beresp.http.X-Url = bereq.url;
set beresp.http.X-Host = bereq.http.host;

# Cache 404s, 301s, at 500s with a short lifetime to protect the backend.
if (beresp.status == 404 || beresp.status == 301 || beresp.status == 500) {
set beresp.ttl = 10m;
}

# Don’t allow static files to set cookies.
# (?i) denotes case insensitive in PCRE (perl compatible regular expressions).
# This list of extensions appears twice, once here and again in vcl_recv so
# make sure you edit both and keep them equal.
if (bereq.url ~ “(?i)\.(pdf|asc|dat|txt|doc|xls|ppt|tgz|csv|png|gif|jpeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?.*)?$”) {
unset beresp.http.set-cookie;
}

# Allow items to remain in cache up to 6 hours past their cache expiration.
set beresp.grace = 6h;
}

9. Change Apache Listening ports

nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf

Change:
Listen 80
to
Listen 8080

Edit the main Apache configuration file (/etc/apache2/apache2.conf), search for ” and change ‘AllowOverride None’ to ‘AllowOverride All’ so it looks like:

<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>

Also, change the port from 80 to 8080 in all virtual hosts located in /etc/apache2/sites-available directory.

10. Create a New Virtual Host in Apache

Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘yourdomain.conf’ on your virtual server:

touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/yourdomain.conf
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/yourdomain.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/yourdomain.conf
nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/yourdomain.conf

Then, add the following lines:

<VirtualHost *:8080>
ServerAdmin admin@your-domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/yourdomain.com
ServerName yourdomain.com
ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com
<FilesMatch \.php$>
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/html/yourdomain.com>
DirectoryIndex index.php
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/yourdomain.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/yourdomain.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

If you downloaded Drupal 8 using Composer, replace ‘/var/www/html/yourdomain.com’ with ‘/var/www/html/yourdomain.com/web’ in the ‘DocumentRoot’ and ‘Directory’ virtual host directives.

11. Restart Apache and Varnish

Restart Apache and Varnish services for the changes to take effect:

service apache2 restart
service varnish restart

12. Install Drupal 8

Open http://yourdomain.com in a web browser , choose install language, click on the ‘Save and continue’ button, select an installation profile (standard), enter the database name, username and password and start the installation. Once installed, you will automatically be redirected to the Drupal 8 administration back-end.

13. Configure Caching

Go to the Drupal 8 administration back-end, click Configuration >> Performance >> set the page cache maximum age and click on the ‘Save configuration’ button:

14. Install Purge and Varnish Purger Modules in Drupal 8

Install the Purge module from the Drupal 8 administration back-end by clicking on Extend >> Install new module , then enter: https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/purge-8.x-3.0-beta8.tar.gz in the ‘Install from a URL’ field and click on the ‘Install’ button.

Then, install the Varnish Purger module by clicking on Extend >> Install new module >> enter: https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/purge-8.x-3.0-beta8.tar.gz in the ‘Install from a URL’ field and click on the ‘Install’ button.

Open http://yourdomain.com/admin/modules and select Purge, Purge Drush, Purge Tokens, Purge UI, Cron processor, Late runtime processor, Core tags queuer, Varnish Focal Point Purger, Varnish Image Purge, Varnish Purger and Varnish Purger Tags, then click on the ‘Install’ button.

15. Configure Varnish Purger

Open http://yourdomain.com/admin/config/development/performance/purge , click Add purger >> Varnish Purger and click on the ‘Add’ button. Click on the newly created button, select configure and add ‘Varnish Purger’ in the name field:

Configure the Purger’s headers by clicking on Headers >> and enter ‘Cache-Tags’  in the header field with the value [invalidation:expression] and click on the ‘Save configuration’ button.

16. Test if Varnish Caching works

In order to test if Varnish caching is woking properly, run the following command on your server:

curl -s --head http://yourdomain.com/about | grep -i cache
Cache-Tags: MISS

Then, run it once again:

curl -s --head http://yourdomain.com/about | grep -i cache

You should receive an output like this:

Cache-Tags: HIT

You can also use varnishadm, varnishstat and varnishlog command line utilities to check if everything works OK.

That is it. Drupal 8 has been configured to use Varnish.

Of course you don’t have to speed up Drupal using Varnish on Debian 9, if you use one of our Linux Server Support Services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to do this for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post, on how to speed up Drupal using Varnish on Debian, 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 Speed Up Drupal Using Varnish on Debian 9 appeared first on LinuxHostSupport.