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Install and Configure
With Ubuntu installing is very straightforward,
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If you load up your browser and type in the ip address of your server you will see a simple page letting you know Apache is working.
Provide Server Name
Apache is working fine, but during restart you will get the warning message, "apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using ...".
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ServerName tinman |
Test
Verify that the Apache Web Server is running first by hitting your server's IP Address. If you do not know your ip address, at the console type,
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You should see a webpage show up saying "It works!".
Apache Basic Server Hardening
Here are some of the basic hardening steps I take today.
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As with any security notes, I will write a disclaimer that there are more advanced ways to secure Apache. You can go as far as compiling your own custom version but that's out of scope for now. |
Edit /etc/apache2/conf.d/security
set ServerTokens Prod - This turns off all the extra header information sent by Apache. Primarily, it would let a client know what version of Apache is being used. The information could be used to look up vulnerabilities on the particular version of Apache you are running.
set ServerSignatures Off - Removes footer information from default apache pages. For example, page not found.
Optional Optimization
I found that you can save quite a bit of memory (to put results here) if the status apache module is disabled,
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That is for now. I might flush this section out a bit more later. Surprisingly, the default Apache configuration is very robust that I rarely need optimization. Instead, we focus optimization efforts on application servers which usually give us the biggest improvements.
References
http://cloudservers.mosso.com/index.php/Ubuntu_-_Apache_configuration#Security_Settings - Rackspace wiki on hardening Apache Web Server.