This step-by-step howto shows a basic setup for Apache 2 web server. Apache is installed on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Dapper, but instructions will probably work on any Ubuntu. This document is a work in progress, initially only required commands are listed without troughout explanations.

© 2006 Tero Karvinen. GNU General Public License, version 2.

$ sudo apt-get install apache2

Surf to your own server on your own local computer:

$ firefox "http://localhost"

Find out how your server is found on the net. Anyone can use your IP address or DNS name to connect to your server:

$ ip addr

Use your own IP address (eth0, first IP number, does not end .255)

$ firefox "http://1.2.3.4"

If DNS is working on your network, you can see your fully qualified domain name with:

$ host 1.2.3.4

With user homepages, anything you put in public_html in your home directory is published on the web.

You must give users the permisson to create homepages. This is done by enabling the userdir module.

$ sudo a2enmod userdir

The a2enmod command just modified configuration files under /etc/apache2/. To take these changes to use, you must restart Apache daemon.

$ sudo systemctl restart apache2

This section has been updated 2016, 2021 and 2022 to enable userdir module and to use modern systemd. Old method in 2016 was: On modern Linuxes such as Ubuntu 16.04, you can restart the server with 'sudo service apache2 restart'. On very old (10+ years old) Linuxes, the command was 'sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart', and before that, Ubuntu shipped Apache with userdir enabled by default. This really shows it pays of to learn command line Linux: two commands out of the whole article needed updates in 14 years.

Go to your home directory

$ cd

Create a folder for public html files, note the underscore ‘_’

$ mkdir public_html

Check your name

$ whoami

Surf to ~yourname:

$ firefox "http://localhost/~tkarvine/"

You should see a directory listing of an empty directory. You can also try it using your IP address and a different machine.

If you see your homepage, well done. You have successfully installed a server with user homepages. You can create some web pages with OpenOffice and save them to your public_html directory.