Apache
Apache Macros – Simplify your config
Many people host small time hobby websites or even websites for family members, friends and clients on a single server. This will lead to quite a lot of repetition for the same apache site definitions over and over again. Thankfully Apache Macros mod will solve many of these issues. This mod will let you create config templates, that can then be re-used over multiple sections of code, allowing you to pass in variables to fill in on use.
Lets get it installed!
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-macro
sudo a2enmod macro
Now, you can start using Macros in your site definitions, to replace common configurations.
» Official Documentation for Apache Macros
Examples of Apache Macros
In this you can see a pretty simple Domain macro. This will set the ServerName, and sets a www. alias. Now we look at the Site macro. In this example you will see it calling other macros for Log, GrantAccess and ForceDomain.
To use this, one could simply add inside of the <VirtualHost> this line:
Use Site mysite.com
And then accessing mysite.com would redirect to www.mysite.com, and log to /var/log/apache2/sites/mysite.com_access.log. Needless to say that likely cuts out 99% of the configuration you’re doing for a simple wordpress site you host for a relative.
And since the Apache Macros are parsed at config load, there’s no impact to your servers performance for using it!
For enterprise grade setups, you’re likely already using Puppet to get the same benefits and only running 1 product per server any-ways, but for those of us kicking it hobby level, Apache macros helps quits a bit! Enjoy 🙂
0Apache 2.4, PHP 5.5 with php-fpm and mod_rewrite
This guide was updated on April 28, 2016 with some missed details!
– Added timeout and flush params to the External Server command, and added missing -socket
– Added missing apache modules actions and alias
So recently I’ve had trouble with the host I had been using for years (bad support, billing broke, DDOS Attacks on their other customers constantly affecting me), so I decided to move my web infrastructure to the same datacenter I run all of our game servers out of, HiVelocity. I decided to fully build this server out fresh instead of trying to clone the old one, and do things better this time around.
First I had recently done research into the performance impact of using Apache MPM-Prefork with mod_php, in that every Apache process has PHP loaded, so even static requests have PHP loaded – eating lots of resources!
I had heard about FastCGI as I had it when I used shared hosting back in the days with SuExec, but now I found something better: PHP-FPM – A special FastCGI based pool that is designed for PHP itself.
Win! so I set up Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, Apache 2.4 and went with the newer MPM Event module, which appears to do even better with Keep Alive requests.
So lets get Apache 2.4 with MPM-Event, PHP5 FPM and some PHP5 Modules going:
sudo apt-get install apache2-mpm-event libapache2-mod-fastcgi php5-fpm php5-cli php5-apcu php5-sqlite php5-gd php5-json php5-curl php5-mcrypt php5-mysqlnd php5-redis
By default it should be configured to use sockets, but if not, check in /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf for:
listen = /var/run/php5-fpm.sock
And change it if its using a TCP port instead. Unix Sockets are faster as it avoids the TCP protocol.
Next up add /etc/apache2/conf-available/php5-fpm.conf and paste this in:
<IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
AddHandler php5-fcgi .php
Action php5-fcgi /php5-fcgi
Alias /php5-fcgi /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5-fcgi
FastCgiExternalServer /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5-fcgi -socket /var/run/php5-fpm.sock -pass-header Authorization -idle-timeout 900 -flush
<Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
Require all granted
Require env REDIRECT_STATUS
</Directory>
</IfModule>
Now to enable these things! You need Actions, Alias, FastCgI and Rewrite modules for Apache.
sudo a2enconf php5-fpm
sudo a2enmod actions alias fastcgi rewrite
now here is the part that caused me so much trouble for an entire week! If you want to have mod_rewrite work, you need to edit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and find the <Directory /var/www/> stanza
By default this has AllowOverride None, and you need to change that to AllowOverride FileInfo
Without this, rewrite rules will not work.
Following this, you should pretty much be set up with a working PHP5-FPM, with mod_rewrite on Apache MPM Event, and have Apache use a lot less resources in general.
I’m sorry if anything in this is off – I went through so many things trying to get everything working, but this is to the best of my knowledge what the final results were.
Please submit any corrections!
0About Aikar
I am Senior Software Engineer and Entrepeneur. I am an enthusiast and love creating things. I operate my own side company in my free time called Starlis LLC, working in Minecraft.
I enjoy doing things right and learning modern technologies.