How to install Apache HTTP web server on Linux.

Source: Apache

Introduction:

If you ever worked with web application then you must have came across the term “Apache”. The Apache HTTP server is an open source web server.

In this article we’ll take a look on how to install and configure Apache on various popular Linux distributions (Debian/Ubuntu, RHEL/Rocky Linux/Alma Linux).

Installation:

The package has different name in different distributions. On Fedora/Red Hat based distribution its called “httpd” and on Debian/Ubuntu based distributions its Apache2.

On Debian/Ubuntu:

First we need to update the package index to ensure we get the latest applications from the repository. To do so run the command below.

sudo apt update

Don’t worry, this will just update the index, not the packages.

After the above is completed, we need to run the following command

sudo apt install apache2

This downloads and installs the Apache HTTP server.

To check the status of Apache, use the below:

systemctl status apache2

You should see the following output:

user@host:~$ systemctl status apache2
● apache2.service - The Apache HTTP Server
  Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apache2.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
  Active: active (running) since Sat 2023-01-12 16:10:16 IST; 7s ago
  Docs: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/

In case you don’t see the status as “active (running)”, you need to run the following command:

sudo systemctl start apache2

In addition you can run the below command to enable the service, which means the Apache server will start automatically when the machine is restarted.

sudo systemctl enable apache2

Now to test it, open a web browser and type ‘localhost’ or the IP of the server and you should see the default Apache page.

On Fedora/Red Hat:

As we have discussed before the package name in this family of Linux distributions is called httpd.

Follow the same process as the above steps:

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install httpd
systemctl status httpd
sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl enable httpd

Hurray! Now Apache server is ready to server your web application.

More on Apache : 1. Basic configuration in Apache. 2 Apache as Reverse Proxy.