Yet Another Web Server HOWTO

A guide to configuring a static web server using Lighttpd on CentOS 7

Yet Another Web Server HOWTO

Version 1.0.0

Note

This is currently in ‘recipe’ format and doesn't explain why or go into depth. Future plan for this doc is to be more detailed in those areas.

What you get

Web Server
- Static virtual hosting
- Let's Encrypt SSl certificates
Admin
- Some attack reduction and blocking

Not in this document

Future work

Add alternate path for web app support (e.g. CGI, uwSGI, etc).

Out of Scope (i.e. Lots of Other Documentation Sources for These)

Initial host/instance setup
General admin utilities and convenience setup

Prerequisites

An internet accessible host
DNS Service (such as easydns.ca, self-hosted, etc)
For this HOWTO: CentOS 7, 1 GiB RAM, 10 GiB HD (e.g. virtual HD)
Repos
- Defaults + EPEL (to install epel do yum install epel-release)

Packages

The following packages need to be installed for this setup (e.g. yum install package1 package2 ...)

Admin Tools

policycoreutils
policycoreutils-python
rsync

Web Server

httpd-tools
lighttpd

Let's Encrypt / ACME SSL Certificates

certbot

Attack Detection / Blocking

fail2ban
fail2ban-firewalld
fail2ban-server

First Steps

Configure networking,admin users etc for your host/instance
(Optional) Install your preferred admin/monitoring utilities etc.
Install “Admin Tools” listed above
Add ‘EPEL’ repository listed above

Web Server & Let's Encrypt Configuration

If you are not serving web pages or apps other Certbot configuration might be more suitable for getting Let's Encrypt SSL certificates for your mail server.

Web Server (HTTP: only serves ACME / Let's Encrypt verification)

Install “Web Server” packages above
In file /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

   1.    below

      ```
      var.vhosts_dir = server_root + "/vhosts"
      ```

       add

      ```
      var.vhosts_acme_dir = server_root + "/vhosts-acme"
      ```

   2.     At end, add:

      ```
      $HTTP["scheme"] == "http" {
          include "/etc/lighttpd/vhosts-acme.d/*.conf"
      }
      ```

Configure IP binding

   1.     Uncomment the ``server.bind = "localhost"`` line and
          replace ``localhost`` with your hostname (e.g.
          ``example.com``)
   2.     Below it add ``$SERVER["socket"] == "0.0.0.0:80" {  }``.
          Optionally replace ``0.0.0.0`` with your ipv4 address.

In file, `/etc/lighttpd/conf.d/dirlisting.conf`

set `dir-listing.activate` to `"disable"`
(unless you want a browse-able list of files and
directories for directories without an index file).

In file /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf 1. inside the directive server.modules =, uncomment or add the following
- mod_alias,
- mod_redirect, 2. If you want to redirect example.com to www.example.com, after the closing parentheses for server-modules add
  
  $HTTP[“scheme”] == “http” { $HTTP[“host”] == “example.com” { url.redirect = (".*” => “http://www.example.com$0”) } }

   3. Uncomment `include "conf.d/compress.conf"`
   4. Execute `mkdir -p /var/cache/lighttpd/compress`
   5. Peform `restorecon -Rv /var/cache/lighttpd`

For each static virtual host to serve, under /etc/lighttpd/vhosts-acme.d/ include a file such as www.example.com.conf (NB: The filename must end in .conf):

  $HTTP["host"] == "www.example.com" {
    var.server_name = "www.example.com"
    server.name = server_name

    server.document-root = vhosts_acme_dir + "/www.example.com"
    accesslog.filename = log_root + "/" + server_name + "/access.log"
  }

Issue setsebool -P httpd_setrlimit on
In /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf set server.max-connections=512 or set server.max-fd=2048 (depending on traffic and resources)
Run lighttpd-angel -t -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf and correct any errors detected.
Execute systemctl restart lighttpd
Do systemctl enable --now lighttpd

Web Server (HTTPS: the real servers; requires SSL)

Prerequisites: Installed and configured web server as above.

Let's Encrypt (Part 1)

Install “Let's Encrypt” package above (certbot)

Add certbot user and group

adduser -U --system -M certbot
passwd -l certbot

mkdir -p /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/deploy && chown -R certbot:certbot /etc/letsencrypt

Place the following script in /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/deploy as lighttpd and make it executable

#!/bin/sh

RET=0
for CERTBOT_DOMAIN in $RENEWED_DOMAINS; do
  cd /etc/letsencrypt/live/${CERTBOT_DOMAIN} && cat fullchain.pem privkey.pem >lighttpd.pem && chmod 640 lighttpd.pem || RET=1
done
exit $RET

Place the following script in /etc/cron.daily as certbot and make it executable
```
#!/bin/sh

/bin/su -c "certbot -q -n renew" certbot
```
Issue mkdir -p /var/lib/letsencrypt && chown certbot:certbot /var/lib/letsencrypt
Do mkdir -p /var/log/letsencrypt && chown certbot:adm /var/log/letsencrypt
Perform certbot register

Lighttpd configuration (Part 2)

Create ACME / Let's Encrypt verification directories (these will be internet accessible from per-vhost directories down (e.g. www.example.com in the example below will be the web root))
```
mkdir -p /var/www/vhosts-acme/www.example.com/.well-known
chown -R certbot:certbot /var/www/vhosts-acme/www.example.com/.well-known
```
Repeat for each vhost you want to enable

Issue

 firewall-cmd --add-service http
 firewall-cmd --add-service https
 firewall-cmd --runtime-to-permanent

Let's Encrypt (Part 2)

Issue

su - certbot

certbot certonly --staging --webroot -w /var/www/vhosts-acme/www.example.com -d www.example.com -d example.com

If the command completes successfully, repeat the certbot command, without --staging.

Issue

cd /etc/letsencrypt/live/<default-domain>     # In the example above <default-domain> is www.example.com
cat fullchain.pem privkey.pem >lighttpd.pem
chmod 640 lighttpd.pem
exit

Note that Certbot recommendation is to put all hostnames on one certificate (see certbot --help --webroot for more information), unless one has specific reasons for having separate certificates. If you need separate certificates than you will need to issue the commands above for each certificate or set of certificates.

Lighttpd configuration (Part 3)

In /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf, before
```
$HTTP["scheme"] == "http" {
    include "/etc/lighttpd/vhosts-acme.d/*.conf"
}
```
which you added previously, add

$SERVER[“socket”] == “0.0.0.0:443” { include “ssl.conf” } $SERVER[“socket”] == “[::]:443” { include “ssl.conf” }

Add a file /etc/lighttpd/ssl.conf that looks like:

ssl.engine                  = "enable"
ssl.pemfile                 = "/etc/letsencrypt/live/www.example.com/lighttpd.pem"
include "/etc/lighttpd/vhosts.d/*.conf"

And add a file /etc/lighttpd/vhosts.d/www.example.com.conf for each virtual host you are adding (in this case www.example.com) that looks like:

  $HTTP["host"] == "www.example.com" {
  var.server_name = "www.example.com"

  server.name = server_name
  server.document-root = vhosts_dir + "/www.example.com"
  accesslog.filename          = log_root + "/" + server_name + "/access.log"
}

In file /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf

inside the directive server.modules =, uncomment or add the following
- "mod_openssl",
And if you want to use HTTP authentication for some pages or sites, also uncomment or add the following
- "mod_auth",
- "mod_authn_file",

If you want to redirect HTTP to HTTPS, before

$HTTP["scheme"] == "http" {
   $HTTP["host"] == "example.com" {
       url.redirect = (".*" => "http://www.example.com$0")
   }
}

which you added above, add

$HTTP["scheme"] == "http" {
    $HTTP["host"] == "example.com" {
        url.redirect = (".*" => "https://www.example.com$0")
    }
 }

and after, add

 $HTTP["scheme"] == "http" {
     $HTTP["url"] !~ "^/.well-known/acme-challenge/" {
         $HTTP["host"] =~ ".*" {
             url.redirect = ( "^/(.*)" => "https://%0/$1" )
         }
     }
 }

If you uncommented/added an mod_auth* line, make sure /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/auth.conf is all commented out
If you want to require HTTP authentication for a page or site
1. in /etc/vhosts.d/<host-to-require-auth>, above the closing brace (}) in the <host>.conf listed previously, add something similar to:
```
auth.backend = "htdigest"
auth.backend.htdigest.userfile = "/etc/lighttpd/users/<host>"
auth.require = ( "/" =>
  (
       "method" => "digest",
       "realm" => "[auth-realm]",
       "require" => "valid-user"
  )
)
```
2. Use htdigest to create /etc/lighttpd/users/<host> (man htdigest for details)
Do mkdir -p /var/www/vhosts/www.example.com for each static vhost you are creating.

DNS Setup

Add a DNS A record for your ‘base hostname’ (e.g. for example.com with <your-ip>).
Add a DNS CNAME record for any virtual hosts (e.g. for www.example.com add a CNAME record pointing to example.com)
Your bare domain name (e.g. example.com) should be A or AAAA records and not CNAMEs. This also helps if you move some subdomains, or the top level domain and some subdomains to services like Netlify.

Attack Detection/Blocking

Install “Attack Detection/Blocking” packages listed above

Create /etc/fail2bain/jail.local like the following:

[sshd]
port = ssh,<your-alternate-ssh-port-if-applicable>
filter = sshd-aggressive
enabled = true

[selinux-ssh]
port = ssh,<your-alternate-ssh-port-if-applicable>
enabled = true

[lighttpd-auth]
enabled = true

[recidive]
enabled = true

Run touch /var/log/fail2ban.log
And finally execute systemctl enable fail2ban && systemctl start fail2ban

Table of Contents

Yet Another Web Server HOWTO

Note

What you get

Not in this document

Future work

Out of Scope (i.e. Lots of Other Documentation Sources for These)

Prerequisites

Packages

Admin Tools

Web Server

Let's Encrypt / ACME SSL Certificates

Attack Detection / Blocking

First Steps

Web Server & Let's Encrypt Configuration

Web Server (HTTP: only serves ACME / Let's Encrypt verification)

Web Server (HTTPS: the real servers; requires SSL)

Let's Encrypt (Part 1)

Lighttpd configuration (Part 2)

Let's Encrypt (Part 2)

Lighttpd configuration (Part 3)

DNS Setup

Attack Detection/Blocking