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How to Install Apache on CentOS 7

Updated by Edward Angert Written by Linode

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How to Install and Configure Apache Web Server on CentOS 7

Apache is an open-source web server that can be configured to serve a single or multiple websites using the same Linode. This guide explains how to install and configure the Apache web server on CentOS 7.

Note

This guide is written for a non-root user. Commands that require elevated privileges are prefixed with sudo. If you’re not familiar with the sudo command, you can check our Users and Groups guide.

Replace each instance of example.com in this guide with your site’s domain name.

Before You Begin

  1. Ensure that you have followed the Getting Started and Securing Your Server guides, and the Linode’s hostname is set.

    To check your hostname run:

    hostname
hostname -f

    The first command should show your short hostname, and the second should show your Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN).

  2. Update your system:

    sudo yum update

Apache

Install and Configure Apache

  1. Install Apache 2.4:

    sudo yum install httpd

  2. Modify httpd.conf with your document root directory to point Apache to your site’s files. Add the <IfModule prefork.c> section below to adjust the resource use settings. The settings shown below are a good starting point for a Linode 2GB:

    Note

    Before changing any configuration files, we recommend that you make a backup of the file. To make a backup:

    cp /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf ~/httpd.conf.backup

    /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf 
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    DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/example.com/public_html"

...

<IfModule prefork.c>
    StartServers        5
    MinSpareServers     20
    MaxSpareServers     40
    MaxRequestWorkers   256
    MaxConnectionsPerChild 5500
</IfModule>

    These settings can also be added to a separate file. The file must be located in the conf.module.d or conf directories, and must end in .conf, since this is the format of files included in the resulting configuration.

Configure Name-based Virtual Hosts

You can choose many ways to set up a virtual host. In this section we recommend and explain one of the easier methods.

  1. Within the conf.d directory create vhost.conf to store your virtual host configurations. The example below is a template for website example.com; change the necessary values for your domain:

    /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhost.conf 
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    NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example.com/public_html/
    ErrorLog /var/www/html/example.com/logs/error.log
    CustomLog /var/www/html/example.com/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

    Additional domains can be added to the vhost.conf file as needed. To add domains, copy the VirtualHost block above and modify its values for each additional virtual host. When new requests come in from the internet, Apache checks which VirtualHost block matches the requested url, and serves the appropriate content:

    Apache VirtualHost Traffic Flow

    Note
    ErrorLog and CustomLog entries are suggested for more specific logging, but are not required. If they are defined (as shown above), the logs directories must be created before you restart Apache.

  2. Create the directories referenced above:

    sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/example.com/{public_html,logs}

  3. Enable Apache to start at boot, and restart the service for the above changes to take effect:

    sudo systemctl enable httpd.service
sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

    You can now visit your domain to test the Apache server. A default Apache page will be visible if no index page is found in your Document Root as declared in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:

    Apache on CentOS 7 Welcome Screen

Configure firewalld to Allow Web Traffic

CentOS 7’s built-in firewall is set to block web traffic by default. Run the following commands to allow web traffic:

sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=http --permanent && sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=https --permanent
sudo systemctl restart firewalld

Next Steps: Add SSL for Security and Install GlusterFS for High Availability

Congratulations! You’ve set up Apache and you’re now ready to host websites. If you’re wondering what additional configuration changes are available to get the most out of your server, some optional steps can be found below.

Secure Your Site with SSL

To add additional security to your site, consider enabling a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate.

Install and Configure GlusterFS, Galera, and XtraDB for High Availability

Consult our Host a Website with High Availability guide to mitigate downtime through redundancy, monitoring, and failover.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

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This guide is published under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.