For testing open a browser and go to `http://<webserveripaddres>` and you will see "it works". The "webserveripaddres" are the ip address of your setup/server machine.
**WARNING**: alpine packagers are a mess, the apache2 default configuration is not ordened so all the conf files under `/etc/apache2/conf.d/` will be loaded with no specific order.
**Start apache2**: After the installation lighttpd is not running. As we made in first section was started already but if you want to start lightttpd manually use: `rc-service apache2 start`
You will get a feedback about the status.
`* Starting apache2... [ ok ]`
**Stop apache2**: If you want to stop the web server use stop in the same way of previous command: `rc-service apache2 stop`
**Restart lighttpd**: After changing the configuration file lighttpd needs to be restarted. `rc-service lighttpd restart`
**If you just want to serve simple HTML pages apache2 can be used out-of-box. No further configuration needed.**
Due to the minimalism of alpine linux, unfortunately the apache2 packaging is the worst ever seen, its configuration file makes it impossible to configure with only single line commands so the commands for quick configuration with cares of overwriting are very dedicated.
#### Status special page
Taking care of the status web server: those special pages are just minimal info of the running web server, are need to view from outside in a case of emergency, do not take the wrong approach of hide behind a filtered ip or filtered network, you must have access in all time in all the web to see problems. The creation of the directory in the htdocs main root web files are just to remember you so then can avoid hiring a staff that becomes indispensable, thus allowing to save costs in knowledge theft by technical staff.
1. Enable the mod_status at the config files
2. change path in the config file, we are using security by obfuscation later by auth module
3. change the restriction of the status pages, currently we just remove it
4. restart the service to see changes at the browser
```
mkdir -p /var/www/localhost/htdocs/stats
sed -i -r 's#.*LoadModule.*modules/mod_info.so.*#LoadModule info_module modules/mod_info.so#g' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
sed -i -r 's#.*LoadModule.*modules/mod_status.so.*#LoadModule status_module modules/mod_status.so#g' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
sed -i -r 's#tion /server-status#tion /stats/server-status#g' /etc/apache2/conf.d/info.conf
sed -i -r 's#tion /server-info#tion /stats/server-info#g' /etc/apache2/conf.d/info.conf
sed -i -r 's#.*Require host.*#\# Require host#g' /etc/apache2/conf.d/info.conf
sed -i -r 's#.*Require ip.*#\# Require ip#g' /etc/apache2/conf.d/info.conf
rc-service apache2 restart
```
#### CGI bin directory support
By default packages assign a directory under localhost main domain, other linux uses a global cgi directory and aliasing.. the most profesional way, but think about it, this per domain configuration allows isolation:
1. create the directory due packager dont make any reference to that neither in the useradd
2. enable the mod_userdir in the config file
3. get sure alias module is also enabled
4. setup and enable the config cgi file path
5. restart the service to see changes at the browser
```
mkdir -p /var/www/localhost/cgi-bin
sed -i -r 's#.*LoadModule.*modules/mod_cgid.so.*#LoadModule cgid_module modules/mod_cgid.so#g' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
sed -i -r 's#.*LoadModule.*modules/mod_cgi.so.*#LoadModule cgi_module modules/mod_cgi.so#g' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
sed -i -r 's#.*LoadModule.*modules/mod_alias.so.*#LoadModule alias_module modules/mod_alias.so#g' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
sed -i -r 's#.*ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/.*# ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/localhost/cgi-bin"#g' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
rc-service apache2 restart
```
After that, all the files under the `/var/www/localhost/cgi-bin` directory will be procesed under `http://localhost/cgi-bin/` path to executed due the directives defined in the line 482 of the config file.
#### Descriptive error or special pages
This pages will be show to visitors when a page or path are not in the server, or when a internal error happened, this are to do not show a horrible message of development to visitors.. and just a nice message or "away from here" message:
1. install the errors package
2. restart the service
```
apk add apache2-error
rc-service apache2 restart
```
All about error documents are define at `/etc/apache2/conf.d/multilang-errordoc.conf`, you can customized byt redefine the error alias and the error codes. The right way is to make a symlink from `/var/www/error-pages` over each document and if there's any customized remove the symlink and create the alternate error page there.
#### Userdir public_html support
As vendors of web sites do, with this each user created in the unix system can serve owned web pages witout being root or gain access to sense files:
1. create the directory for put the html files due alpine crap does not follow any standard
2. enable the module in the webserver
3. set the user directory in the config file
4. restart the service to see the changes at the browser per user
```
mkdir -p /etc/skel/public_html
for i in /home/*; do mkdir $i/public_html ; done
sed -i -r 's#.*LoadModule.*modules/mod_usertrack.so.*#LoadModule usertrack_module modules/mod_usertrack.so#g' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
sed -i -r 's#.*LoadModule.*modules/mod_userdir.so.*#LoadModule userdir_module modules/mod_userdir.so#g' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
sed -i -r 's#^UserDir .*#UserDir public_html#g' /etc/apache2/conf.d/userdir.conf
rc-service lighttpd restart
```
**WARNING** as we said.. alpine policy is to be most upstream equal possible, almost like packagers are lazy? NO! just dont put any thing about root user access, but well, you must know what are you doing, by the addition of `UserDir disabled root postmaster` you will denied specific users due security.
If you change the user dir , then you must change the directory definition at the last block.
The error of the XML file in the proxy modules are due the incomplete right made package:
```
httpd: Syntax error on line 481 of /etc/apache2/httpd.conf: Syntax error on line 13 of /etc/apache2/conf.d/proxy-html.conf: Cannot load /usr/lib/libxml2.so into server: Error loading shared library /usr/lib/libxml2.so: No such file or directory
```
The right setup of any proxy module or redirection is:
1. install the proxy apache2 packages
2. fix the configuration of the modules
3. setup a conf file for your redirection
4. restart the service
```
apk add apache2-proxy-html apache2-proxy
sed -i -r 's#/usr/lib/libxml2.so#/usr/lib/libxml2.so.2#g' /etc/apache2/conf.d/proxy-html.conf
cat >> /etc/apache2/conf.d/myproxy.conf <<EOF
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyRequests off
AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode
ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:3002/ nocanon
EOF
service apache2 restart
```
**WARNING** of course, the `myproxy.conf` is hypothetical, for didactic purposes, here it is only exemplified that the error is corrected in the step of the sed command to work.
The package as we said is made in a limited way, and only has a unique config file at `/etc/apache2/conf.d/ssl.conf`.
Best way to do that are by independient include files, Debian counterpart has a good mechanism that enables configuration files, but that is not the case here, so we must deal with the random loading of the modules.
We need to created a sefl-signed certificate, so openssl are need in any case either if used a remote made certificate:
