Question

Block default Apache page on Ubuntu 14.04?

Posted July 15, 2017 5.7k views
Ubuntu Apache

I have a few web sites running on the same IP in my droplet and just noticed that if I access droplet’s IP in the browser, it loads the default Apache page for Ubuntu 14.04.

Is there a way to turn prevent this default Apache page from loading?

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cloudnine
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2 answers
Mohsen47 July 15, 2017

@cloudnine

Disable the default apache site using this command:

a2dissite 000-default.conf

Hope this helps.

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  • cloudnine July 15, 2017

    @Mohsen47, thanks. I was aware of that, but disabling the default virtual host simply brings up the next enabled virtual host in the alphabetical order if you put the droplet’s IP in the browser.

    For example, I have a virtual host called dev.example.com on my Droplet and when I type in the droplet IP after disabling the default vhost, it automatically redirects to dev.example.com

    I don’t want that. Instead, I would prefer to display a 403 error page or something similar.

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    • Mohsen47 July 15, 2017

      @cloudnine

      In this case renable the default vhost and add this to its config file:

      Redirect 403 /
ErrorDocument 403 "Not allowed"

      Hope this helps.

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      • cloudnine July 17, 2017

        @Mohsen47, it does, thank you. :-) I changed the text string to ‘Forbidden’.

        The reason I undertook this exercise was to try and minimize exposure of the web server details. I had already set ServerTokens in /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/security.conf to minimal, but it’s fairly trivial to look up the IP of a domain and then load it to bring up the default Ubuntu apache page. Not that it’s a great protection for the server or any such thing, but every little bit helps.

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      • cloudnine July 17, 2017

        Hmm…I think this approach has some problems. After I put in the redirect, the phpmyadmin login page stopped working, so I had to remove the directive.

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        • Mohsen47 July 17, 2017

          @cloudnine

          Do you access phpmyadmin using IP address?

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          • Mohsen47 July 17, 2017

            Hi @cloudnine

            I found it if you are using apache version 2.4 you can do the following:

            • Enable default vhost and change the ServerName directive to the IP address of your server.
            • Add these four lines of code to it: <If "%{REQUEST_URI} == '/'"> Redirect 403 / ErrorDocument 403 "Not allowed" </If>

            Hope this helps, let me know please.

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          • cloudnine July 22, 2017

            @Mohsen47, thanks for the updated code. I can’t afford to try it on the production server, though. May be I will try it on a test server. Thanks for your efforts to help.

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Mohsen47 July 17, 2017
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