Configuration Overview
/etc/apache2/ |-- apache2.conf | `-- ports.conf |-- mods-enabled | |-- *.load | `-- *.conf |-- conf-enabled | `-- *.conf |-- sites-enabled | `-- *.conf
- apache2.conf is the main configuration file. It puts the pieces together by including all remaining configuration files when starting up the web server.
- ports.conf is always included from the main configuration file. It is used to determine the listening ports for incoming connections, and this file can be customized anytime.
- Configuration files in the mods-enabled/, conf-enabled/ and sites-enabled/ directories contain particular configuration snippets which manage modules, global configuration fragments, or virtual host configurations, respectively.
- They are activated by symlinking available configuration files from their respective *-available/ counterparts. These should be managed by using our helpers a2enmod, a2dismod, a2ensite, a2dissite, and a2enconf, a2disconf . See their respective man pages for detailed information.
- The binary is called apache2 and is managed using systemd, so to start/stop the service use systemctl start apache2 and systemctl stop apache2, and use systemctl status apache2 and journalctl -u apache2 to check status. system and apache2ctl can also be used for service management if desired. Calling /usr/bin/apache2 directly will not work with the default configuration.