Category Archives: Apache

Apache

apache redirects to https

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With no cost SSL certificates easily available, there’s no reason not to have your websites running on https. Here’s what you need to setup inside your apache conf files. (I’ll use this server as an example)


<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName markcerv.com
    ServerAlias www.markcerv.com
    DocumentRoot /srv/www/markcerv/htdocs/
    <Directory /srv/www/markcerv/htdocs>
        Require all granted
        Allowoverride ALL
    </Directory>

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
    RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R=301,L]

</VirtualHost>

The keywords that need to be added are:

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
    RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R=301,L]

That’s it. That should force everything over to the https version of your site. With this method, if your ServerName contains www.example.com, then you’ll get redirected to the www version of the site.

Apache, Command Line (linux/bash), Shell Related, sysadmin

Another instance of Certbot is already running

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I’ve written before about Certbot and how wonderful it is. Recently I’ve come across a situation where certbot renewals aren’t going thru:

root@host:~# certbot renew --force-renewal
Another instance of Certbot is already running.

root@host:~# ps waux | grep certbot
root     20947  0.0  0.0   4500   744 ?        Ss   16:52   0:00 /bin/sh -c /usr/local/sbin/certbot-renew.sh
root     20949  0.0  0.0   4500   736 ?        S    16:52   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/local/sbin/certbot-renew.sh
root     20953  0.3  4.4 148704 45440 ?        S    16:52   0:00 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/certbot renew --post-hook touch /var/lib/letsencrypt/updated
root     21049  0.0  0.0  12940  1012 pts/4    S+   16:54   0:00 grep --color=auto certbot

root@host:~# certbot --version
certbot 0.31.0

If I check the logfile /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log I can see that it keeps on trying and trying to do renewals.

grep "random delay" /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log

2020-04-14 16:16:02,526:INFO:certbot.renewal:Non-interactive renewal: random delay of 5 seconds
2020-04-14 16:17:02,135:INFO:certbot.renewal:Non-interactive renewal: random delay of 409 seconds
2020-04-14 16:24:01,684:INFO:certbot.renewal:Non-interactive renewal: random delay of 290 seconds
2020-04-14 16:29:01,744:INFO:certbot.renewal:Non-interactive renewal: random delay of 190 seconds
2020-04-14 16:33:02,261:INFO:certbot.renewal:Non-interactive renewal: random delay of 283 seconds
2020-04-14 16:38:01,813:INFO:certbot.renewal:Non-interactive renewal: random delay of 350 seconds
2020-04-14 16:44:01,613:INFO:certbot.renewal:Non-interactive renewal: random delay of 117 seconds
2020-04-14 16:46:02,187:INFO:certbot.renewal:Non-interactive renewal: random delay of 309 seconds
2020-04-14 16:52:01,834:INFO:certbot.renewal:Non-interactive renewal: random delay of 453 seconds

Here’s what I do next:

  1. find any running certbot processes.
  2. kill them (with -9) one by one
  3. find and lock files
  4. remove them
root@host:~# ps waux | grep cert
root     20947  0.0  0.0   4500   744 ?        Ss   16:52   0:00 /bin/sh -c /usr/local/sbin/certbot-renew.sh
root     20949  0.0  0.0   4500   736 ?        S    16:52   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/local/sbin/certbot-renew.sh
root     20953  0.1  4.4 148704 45440 ?        S    16:52   0:00 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/certbot renew --post-hook touch /var/lib/letsencrypt/updated
root     21152  0.0  0.0  12940   936 pts/4    S+   16:57   0:00 grep --color=auto cert

root@host:~# kill -9 20947
root@host:~# kill -9 20949
root@host:~# kill -9 20953
root@host:~# find / -type f -name ".certbot.lock"
/var/lib/letsencrypt/.certbot.lock
/var/log/letsencrypt/.certbot.lock
/etc/letsencrypt/.certbot.lock

root@host:~# rm /var/lib/letsencrypt/.certbot.lock  /var/log/letsencrypt/.certbot.lock /etc/letsencrypt/.certbot.lock

Next, I want to uninstall it.

root@host:~# apt list --installed | grep certbot

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

certbot/xenial,now 0.31.0-1+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+1 all [installed]
python3-acme/xenial,now 0.31.0-2+ubuntu16.04.6+certbot+2 all [installed,automatic]
python3-asn1crypto/xenial,now 0.22.0-2+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+1 all [installed,automatic]

Next, I want to uninstall it:

root@host:~#  apt-get remove certbot
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  python3-acme python3-certbot python3-configargparse python3-funcsigs python3-future python3-icu python3-josepy
  python3-mock python3-parsedatetime python3-pbr python3-requests-toolbelt python3-rfc3339 python3-tz
  python3-zope.component python3-zope.event python3-zope.hookable python3-zope.interface
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  certbot
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
After this operation, 39.9 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

Type in Y to continue, then after that, get rid of code you no longer need

root@mhs02:~#  apt-get remove certbot
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  python3-acme python3-certbot python3-configargparse python3-funcsigs python3-future python3-icu python3-josepy
  python3-mock python3-parsedatetime python3-pbr python3-requests-toolbelt python3-rfc3339 python3-tz
  python3-zope.component python3-zope.event python3-zope.hookable python3-zope.interface
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  certbot
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
After this operation, 39.9 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 158315 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing certbot (0.31.0-1+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...
root@host:~# apt autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  python3-acme python3-certbot python3-configargparse python3-funcsigs python3-future python3-icu python3-josepy
  python3-mock python3-parsedatetime python3-pbr python3-requests-toolbelt python3-rfc3339 python3-tz
  python3-zope.component python3-zope.event python3-zope.hookable python3-zope.interface
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 17 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
After this operation, 6,352 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 158306 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing python3-certbot (0.31.0-1+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+1) ...
Removing python3-acme (0.31.0-2+ubuntu16.04.6+certbot+2) ...
Removing python3-configargparse (0.11.0-1+certbot~xenial+1) ...
Removing python3-mock (1.3.0-2.1ubuntu1) ...
Removing python3-funcsigs (0.4-2) ...
Removing python3-parsedatetime (2.4-3+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+3) ...
Removing python3-future (0.15.2-4+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+3) ...
Removing python3-icu (1.9.2-2build1) ...
Removing python3-josepy (1.1.0-2+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+1) ...
Removing python3-pbr (1.8.0-4ubuntu1) ...
Removing python3-requests-toolbelt (0.8.0-1+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+1) ...
Removing python3-rfc3339 (1.0-4+certbot~xenial+1) ...
Removing python3-tz (2014.10~dfsg1-0ubuntu2) ...
Removing python3-zope.component (4.3.0-1+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+3) ...
Removing python3-zope.event (4.2.0-1) ...
Removing python3-zope.hookable (4.0.4-4+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+1) ...
Removing python3-zope.interface (4.3.2-1+ubuntu16.04.1+certbot+1) ...

Check to see if that removed the process

root@host:~# ps waux | grep cert
root     21304  0.0  0.0   4500   748 ?        Ss   17:01   0:00 /bin/sh -c /usr/local/sbin/certbot-renew.sh
root     21306  0.0  0.0   4500   776 ?        S    17:01   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/local/sbin/certbot-renew.sh
root     21310  0.2  4.7 157436 48228 ?        S    17:01   0:00 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/certbot renew --post-hook touch /var/lib/letsencrypt/updated
root     22017  0.0  0.1  12940  1092 pts/4    S+   17:08   0:00 grep --color=auto cert
root@host:~# ls /usr/local/sbin
certbot-renew.sh

root@host:~#  mv /usr/local/sbin/certbot-renew.sh   /usr/local/sbin/certbot-renew.sh.hide

Triple check nothings running

root@mhs02:~# ps waux | grep cert
root     22118  0.0  0.1  12940  1020 pts/4    S+   17:09   0:00 grep --color=auto cert

Follow the instructions at:
https://certbot.eff.org/instructions on how to install certbot for your installation.

sudo apt-get install certbot python-certbot-apache

Finally, let’s check the server uptime, check the expiration date of a site running on this server, gracefully restart apache, then check the expiration date again:

root@host:~# apachectl status | grep uptime
   Server uptime: 11 days 22 hours 45 minutes 34 seconds

root@host:~# echo | openssl s_client -servername www.example.org -connect www.example.org:443 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -noout -dates
notBefore=Mar  3 16:27:55 2020 GMT
notAfter=Jun  1 16:27:55 2020 GMT

root@host:~# apachectl graceful
[Tue Apr 14 17:17:24.937566 2020] [so:warn] [pid 26644] AH01574: module security2_module is already loaded, skipping

root@host:~# apachectl status | egrep 'uptime|Restart'
   Restart Time: Thursday, 02-Apr-2020 18:29:10 UTC
   Server uptime: 11 days 22 hours 52 minutes 3 seconds


root@host:~# echo | openssl s_client -servername www.example.org -connect www.example.org:443 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -noout -dates
notBefore=Apr 14 16:13:15 2020 GMT
notAfter=Jul 13 16:13:15 2020 GMT

Success! We can see that the new renewal dates are in place.

To make sure that renewals happen automatically, I like to have this crontab in place:

# Let's keep let's encrypt ssl certs up to date.
31 3,15 * * * /usr/bin/certbot renew --quiet
Apache, Command Line (linux/bash), sysadmin

Certbot renewal script

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By now you know that your website needs to run over HTTPS. One of the easiest and cheapest ways to do this is by using
https://certbot.eff.org/ which in turn deploys https://letsencrypt.org/ certificates.

Once you have it installed, you’ll want to install a crontab entry that will run the updates 2x per day:

23 3,15 * * * /usr/local/sbin/certbot-renew.sh
#!/bin/sh
#
# Save this file as /usr/local/sbin/certbot-renew.sh
#
UPDATE_FLAG_FILE=/var/lib/letsencrypt/updated

rm -f $UPDATE_FLAG_FILE
/usr/local/bin/certbot-auto renew --post-hook "touch $UPDATE_FLAG_FILE"

if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
  exit $?
fi

if [ ! -f $UPDATE_FLAG_FILE ]; then
  exit 0
fi


service apache2 status

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  service apache2 reload
  if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
    >&2 echo failed to reload apache2
    exit 1
  fi
fi
Apache, Configurations

Apache and mod-rewrite – redirecting a folder to new server

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If you ever need to move one (or more) subdirectories, but not an entire site over to a new webserver, and you want to redirect the traffic, here’s how you can do it:


RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^directory_name(.*)$ http://www.example.com/directory_name [R=301,NC,L]

If you have multiple virtual hosts on the site, you might want to specify which host name’s directory_name should get sent to new server www.example.com

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^markcerv.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.markcerv.com$
RewriteRule ^directory_name(.*)$ http://www.example.com/directory_name [R=301,NC,L]