How to Enable SSL in Apache2 on Ubuntu

In this tutorial, I’ll explain you that how to enable the SSL for your website under Apache2 on Ubuntu Server. For this, I’m assuming:

1. That you have a working apache2 setup on your Ubuntu Server.

2. You have correctly configured the dns records for your domain.

3. You already got a certificate from a trusted certificate authority (CA) such as Godaddy,Verisign, Comodo, etc.

Let’s verify our web server that it is up and running, before beginning this tutorial:

http://rbgeek.com

Create a directory inside the /etc/apache2/ directory,where we’ll save the private key, public key certificate and bundle certificate:

cd /etc/apache2/ 
sudo mkdir ssl

Transfer the private key, public key certificate and bundle certificate inside the /etc/apache2/ssl/ directory and verify it:

cd ssl
ls

We want to configure the apache in such a way that it’ll run on HTTPs and for this we need to enable ssl Apache2 module with a2enmod:

sudo a2enmod ssl

It will suggest you to restart apache,ignore that message for now.

Edit the ports.conf file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf

Ensure that port 443 is defined as follows and add the NameVirtualHost for port 443,comment other lines:

NameVirtualHost *:443
Listen 443

Open up the SSL config file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl

Fill in the correct ServerAdmin email address,add the ServerName line and adjust the path in the DocumentRootline. Also make sure that we have a valid path for the SSL:


Now we need to configure the SSL site:

sudo a2ensite default-ssl

Restart the Apache service:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now we should be able to connect to the server through SSL using Chrome or any other browser:



Verify the Certificate, that it’s the same that we got from a trusted certificate authority (CA) and configured:



Our Web Server is also working with http (port 80).But, we don’t want that users access it through http, we only want to access it through https. To fix this, we need to edit the /etc/apache2/sites-available/default file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Delete everything and add a redirection:

RedirectPermanent / https://rbgeek.com/

Restart the apache2 service:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now if we go to http://rbgeek.com/, it will redirect us to https://rbgeek.com/

How to recover deleted Apache Log

Scenario: The server is running Apache and by mistake one of the log files gets deleted. How, we can recover it?

Currently, Apache server is working perfectly:



Login/Switch to as root user:



Move to the httpd in log directory:

cd /var/log/httpd

Delete the log file:

rm -f access_log

So the log file has been deleted,now find the process number for main apache procees that owned by root:

ps aux | grep httpd

In this case, the pid for the main apache process is 1784.

Now lets list the file descriptors:

ls -lsa /proc/1784/fd

Stop the apache service:

service httpd stop

Now copy the access log file that is marked as deleted (In this case it is 7) into the log directory:

cp /proc/1784/fd/7 /var/log/httpd/access_log

Start the apache service again:

service httpd start

Access the webpage again from your server:



Verify the log file:

tail -f /var/log/httpd/access_log

It’s working

Hope this will help you!