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Apache Cheat Sheet

CLI

apache2ctl -S        # List VHost precedence
apache2ctl -M        # List active modules

a2enmod <module>     # Enable module (links from /etc/apache2/mods-available to /etc/apache2/mods-enabled)
a2dismod <module>    # Disable module

a2ensite <site>      # Enable site (links from /etc/apache2/sites-available to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled)
a2dissite <site>     # Disable site

a2enconf <conf>      # Enable config (links from /etc/apache2/conf-available to /etc/apache2/conf-enabled)
a2disconf <conf>     # Disable config

Config Examples

Rewrites

  • Rewrite on File Pattern

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} (.*)\.(html|htm)$

  • Rewrite on User Agent

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (iPhone|iPad)

  • Rewrite and add environment variable to request (for example pass along remote user)

    RewriteRule .* - [E=PROXY_USER:%{LA-U:REMOTE_USER}]

  • Injecting cookies with RewriteRule and CO flag

Reverse Proxy

ProxyPass        "/foo" "http://foo.example.com/bar"
ProxyPassReverse "/foo" "http://foo.example.com/bar"

Forward Proxy

ProxyRequests On
ProxyVia On

<Proxy *>
  Require host internal.example.com
</Proxy>

Proxying Websockets

a2enmod proxy_wstunnel

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Upgrade} websocket [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Connection} upgrade [NC]
RewriteRule ^/?(.*) "wss://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1" [P,L]

Authentication

  • Skip authentication for certain URIs

    Require expr %{REQUEST_URI} =~ m#<some pattern>#

Logs with X-Forwarded-For IPs

Get X-Forwarded-For IPs in log

  # Define a LogFormat printing X-Forwaded-For IPs
  LogFormat "%{X-Forwarded-For}i %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" proxy
  
  # Check if the header is set to an IP
  SetEnvIf X-Forwarded-For "^.*\..*\..*\..*" forwarded
  
  # Depending on the check flag 'forwarded' switch between standard and XFF LogFormat
  CustomLog "logs/access_log" combined env=!forwarded
  CustomLog "logs/access_log" proxy env=forwarded

Log Rotation

  • Pipe CustomLog to a script:

     LoadModule logio_module modules/mod_logio.so

<IfModule mod_logio.c>
        CustomLog "| some-script.sh"  "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\""
</IfModule>

    Do logrotation using Apaches logrotate script:

    CustomLog "|/usr/local/apache/bin/rotatelogs /var/log/access_log 86400" common

    Perform logrotation with cronolog:

    CustomLog "|/usr/local/sbin/cronolog /logs/%m-%d-%Y-access.log" combined

    The advantage of cronolog is that you may pass filenames with strptime format patterns that are replaced by cronolog. And the are evaluated all the time so that over time cronolog writes into different files according to your pattern.

Data Privacy

Alternatives to avoid tracking users by IP:

  • Completely remove IPs: Replace %h in you LogFormat with “-“, this ensures all log reading tools can still parse the logs
  • Truncate/replace the IPs during log rotation.

  • Use a piped CustomLog and replace the IP ad-hoc. Here is a simple IPv4 only example with sed

    CustomLog "|$/bin/sed 's/^\([^.]*\.[^.]*\.[^.]*\.\)[0-9][0-9]* \(.*\)$/\1.0 \2/' >>logs/access_log" truncated_ip

  • Truncate the IP using rewrite rules, by extracting all but the last octect of the IP using RewriteCond regex and save the result with the last octect set to 0 in an env variable in a RewriteRule, finally use the env variable in the LogFormat (see (StackOverflow)[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19452624/apply-a-mask-to-ip-with-logformat])

    # Note: also needs a IPv6 pattern
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.)\d+$
RewriteRule "^/.*" "/$1" [E=truncated_ip:%1]
LogFormat "%{ENV:truncated_ip} %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b ..." truncated_ip

Mitigating security issues

Hide Server Name

ServerSignature Off
ServerTokens Prod

Disable SSLv2 and SSLv3

SSLProtocol all -SSLv2 -SSLv3

DH downgrade

Create a unique DH group

openssl dhparam -out dhparams.pem 2048

and load it from Apache config

SSLOpenSSLConfCmd DHParameters "{path to dhparams.pem}"

finally load sane ciphers.

Sane Ciphers

Suggestion from 22.5.2015 by weakdh.org:

SSLCipherSuite          ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES128-GCM-SHA256:kEDH+AESGCM:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-DSS-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:AES:CAMELLIA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!RC4:!MD5:!PSK:!aECDH:!EDH-DSS-DES-CBC3-SHA:!EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:!KRB5-DES-CBC3-SHA

SSLHonorCipherOrder     on

Misc

  • Apache vs. Lighttpd Rewrite Rules: How to migrate.

  • Exception Hook: Since 2.0.49 Apache has an exception hook to handle crashes.

    EnableExceptionHook on

  • htaccess doesn’t work:

    AllowOverride All

  • environment variables via .htaccess:

    SetEnv VARNAME somevalue