Which UFW service to use for Apache2?

Posted on August 3, 2020

Ubuntu 20.04

By joestroup

Setting up a Ubuntu droplet for a web server, I want to choose the right firewall options.

UFW has three “services” for Apache2. “Apache” “Apache Full” and “Apache Secure”

I can’t find documentation on how these services differ.

Can someone help me find out the difference between these services?

Many thanks!

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alexdo

August 3, 2020

Hi, @joestroup

This really depends from your needs. There are three profiles available for Apache:

Apache: This profile opens only port 80 (normal, unencrypted web traffic)
Apache Full: This profile opens both port 80 (normal, unencrypted web traffic) and port 443 (TLS/SSL encrypted traffic)
Apache Secure: This profile opens only port 443 (TLS/SSL encrypted traffic)

It is recommended that you enable the most restrictive profile that will still allow the traffic you’ve configured. Since we haven’t configured SSL for our server yet in this guide, we will only need to allow traffic on port 80:

sudo ufw allow 'Apache'

You can verify the change by typing:

sudo ufw status

The output will provide a list of allowed HTTP traffic:

Output
Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere                  
Apache                     ALLOW       Anywhere                
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)             
Apache (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

As indicated by the output, the profile has been activated to allow access to the Apache web server.

You can find more information here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-the-apache-web-server-on-ubuntu-20-04

Hope that this helps! Regards, Alex

will5000

August 4, 2022

they are defined in apache2-utils.ufw.profile

# cd /etc/ufw/applications.d

/etc/ufw/applications.d# cat apache2-utils.ufw.profile 
[Apache]
title=Web Server
description=Apache v2 is the next generation of the omnipresent Apache web server.
ports=80/tcp

[Apache Secure]
title=Web Server (HTTPS)
description=Apache v2 is the next generation of the omnipresent Apache web server.
ports=443/tcp

[Apache Full]
title=Web Server (HTTP,HTTPS)
description=Apache v2 is the next generation of the omnipresent Apache web server.
ports=80,443/tcp