Being able
to run your systems on IPv6, have automatic address assignment and
the ability
to resolve host names are
the necessary building blocks in your IPv6 network infrastructure. Now, that everything is in place it is about time that we are going
to enable another service
to respond
to IPv6 requests.
The following article will guide through
the steps on
how to enable Apache2 httpd
to listen and respond
to incoming IPv6 requests.
This is
the fourth article in a series on IPv6 configuration:
Configure IPv6 on your Linux system
DHCPv6: Provide IPv6 information in your local network
Enabling DNS for IPv6 infrastructure
Accessing your web server via IPv6
Piece of advice: This is based on my findings on
the internet while reading other people's helpful articles and going through a couple of man-pages on my local system.
Surfing
the web - IPv6 style
Enabling IPv6 connections in Apache 2 is fairly simply. But first let's check whether your system has a running instance of Apache2 or not. You can check this like so:
$ service apache2 status Apache2 is running (pid 2680).
In case that you got a 'service unknown' you have
to install Apache
to proceed with
the following steps:
$ sudo apt-get install apache2
Out of
the box, Apache binds
to all your available network interfaces and listens
to TCP port 80.
To check this, run
the following command:
$ sudo netstat -lnptu | grep "apache2\W*$"tcp6 0 0 :::80 :::* LISTEN 28306/apache2
In this case Apache2 is already binding
to IPv6 (and implicitly
to IPv4). If you only got a tcp output, then your HTTPd is not yet IPv6 enabled.
Check your Listen directive, depending on your system this might be in a different location than
the default in Ubuntu.
$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf
# If you just
change the port or add more ports here, you will likely also# have
to change the VirtualHost statement in# /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default# This is also true if you have upgraded from before 2.2.9-3 (i.e. from# Debian etch). See /usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/NEWS.Debian.gz and# README.Debian.gzNameVirtualHost *:80Listen 80<IfModule mod_ssl.c> # If you add NameVirtualHost *:443 here, you will also have
to change #
the VirtualHost statement in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl #
to <VirtualHost *:443> # Server Name Indication for SSL named virtual hosts is currently not # supported by MSIE on Windows XP. Listen 443</IfModule><IfModule mod_gnutls.c> Listen 443</IfModule>
Just in case that you don't have a ports.conf file, look for it like so:
$ cd /etc/apache2/$ fgrep -r -i 'listen' ./*
And modify
the related file instead of
the ports.conf. Which most probably might be either apache2.conf or httpd.conf anyways.
Okay, please bear in mind that Apache can only bind once on
the same interface and port. So, eventually, you might be interested
to add another port which explicitly listens
to IPv6 only. In that case, you would add
the following in your configuration file:
Listen 80Listen [2001:db8:bad:a55::2]:8080
But this is completely optional... Anyways, just
to complete all steps, you save
the file, and then check
the syntax like so:
$ sudo apache2ctl configtestSyntax OK
Ok, now let's apply
the modifications
to our running Apache2 instances:
$ sudo service apache2 reload * Reloading web server config apache2 ...done.
$ sudo netstat -lnptu | grep "apache2\W*$" tcp6 0 0 2001:db8:bad:a55:::8080 :::* LISTEN 5922/apache2 tcp6 0 0 :::80 :::* LISTEN 5922/apache2
There we have two daemons running and listening
to different TCP ports.
Now, that
the basics are in place, it's time
to prepare any website
to respond
to incoming requests on
the IPv6 address. Open up any configuration file you have below your sites-enabled folder.
$ ls -al /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/...
$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
<VirtualHost *:80 [2001:db8:bad:a55::2]:8080> ServerAdmin
[email protected] ServerName server.ios.mu ServerAlias server
Here, we have
to check and modify
the VirtualHost directive and enable it
to respond
to the IPv6 address and port our web server is listening
to. Save your changes, run
the configuration test and reload Apache2 in order
to apply your modifications. After successful steps you can launch your favourite browser and navigate
to your IPv6 enabled web server.
Accessing an IPv6 address in
the browser
That looks like a successful surgery
to me...
Note: In case that you received a timeout, check whether your client is operating on IPv6, too.
