Ansible role httpd

A simple Ansible role for installing and configuring the Apache web server for RHEL/CentOS 7-8 and Fedora 28+. Specifically, the responsibilities of this role are to:

• Install the necessary packages;
• Maintain the main configuration file;
• Maintain the configuration file for mod_ssl. The default settings are based on the recommendations of Mozilla's SSL Configuration Generator;
• Install custom certificate files;
• Enable and maintain the configuration file for mod_status.

Currently, no virtual hosts or other features are provided.

Requirements

• The firewall settings are not considered to be a concern of this role. You can use another role for this, e.g. bertvv.rh-base.

Dependencies

No dependencies.

Role Variables

None of the variables below are required

Variable	Default	Comments
httpd_access_log	logs/access_log	Location of the access log file (http)
httpd_access_log_ssl	logs/ssl_access_log	Location of the access log file (https)
httpd_document_root	'/var/www/html'	Path to the document root (directory containing html files)
httpd_error_log	logs/error_log	Location of the error log file (http)
httpd_error_log_ssl	logs/ssl_error_log	Location of the error log file (https)
httpd_extended_status	on	Enable extended status info (see httpd_status_enable)
httpd_listen_ssl	443	Port number for https connections
httpd_listen	80	Port number for http connections
httpd_log_level_ssl	warn	Verbosity of the https logs
httpd_log_level	warn	Verbosity of the http logs
httpd_server_admin	root@localhost	E-mail address of the server administrator
httpd_server_name	-	Hostname that the server uses to identify itself
httpd_server_root	'/etc/httpd'	Directory containing configuration files
httpd_server_tokens	Prod	See documentation
httpd_ssl_ca_certificate_file	-	Name of a CA certificate file. See below, Installing certificates
httpd_ssl_certificate_chain_file	-	Name of a certificate chain file. See below, Installing certificates
httpd_ssl_certificate_file	localhost.crt	Name of the certificate file. See below, Installing certificates
httpd_ssl_certificate_key_file	localhost.key	Name of the certificate key file. See below, Installing certificates
httpd_ssl_cipher_suite	...	See default variables
httpd_ssl_compression	'off'	When 'on', enables compression on the SSL level (which may cause security issues)
httpd_ssl_honor_cipher_order	'on'	When 'on', prefer the server's cipher preference order instead of the client's
httpd_ssl_protocol	'all -SSLv3 -TLSv1'	Specifies usable SSL/TLS protocol versions
httpd_ssl_session_tickets	'off'	When 'on', enables use of TLS session tickets (which may cause security issues)
httpd_ssl_stapling_cache	'shmcb:/var/run/ocsp(128000)'	Configures the OCSP stapling cache (1)
httpd_ssl_stapling_responder_timeout	5	Timeout for OCSP stapling queries (1)
httpd_ssl_stapling_return_responder_errors	'off'	When 'on', pass stapling related OCSP errors on to client (1)
httpd_ssl_use_stapling	'on'	When 'on', enables stapling of OCSP responses in the TLS handshake (1)
httpd_status_enable	false	Enable mod_status
httpd_status_location	'/server-status'	Location for mod_status status page
httpd_status_require	'host localhost'	Access control for mod_status

(1) For more information on Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) stapling, see the Apache documentation, and the section "Certificate Status Request" of RFC 6066

Installing certificates

By default, the role uses the self-signed certificate that is generated when installing mod_ssl. If you want to use a custom certificate, put it in a subdirectory named files/, relative to your main playbook location. Then set the appropriate role variables. For instructions on how to set up your own (self-signed) certificates, see e.g. the CentOS Wiki.

E.g. you have a server key acme-inc.key and certificate file acme-inc.crt. The directory structure should look:

.
├── playbook.yml
└── files
    ├── acme-inc.crt
    └── acme-inc.key

Then, define the role variables in the appropriate location (playbook vars: section, group_vars, or host_vars):

httpd_ssl_certificate_key_file: 'acme-inc.key'
httpd_ssl_certificate_file: 'acme-inc.crt'

The same goes for a certificate chain file and CA certificate file. Ensure they are available in the files/ directory, and define variables httpd_ssl_certificate_chain_file, and httpd_ssl_ca_certificate_file, respectively.

Example Playbook

See the test playbooks in either the Vagrant or Docker test environment. See the section Testing for details.

Testing

There are two types of test environments available. One powered by Vagrant, another by Docker. The latter is suitable for running automated tests on Travis-CI. Test code is kept in separate orphan branches. For details of how to set up these test environments on your own machine, see the README files in the respective branches:

• Vagrant: vagrant-tests
• Docker: docker-tests

Contributing

Issues, feature requests, ideas are appreciated and can be posted in the Issues section.

Pull requests are also very welcome. The best way to submit a PR is by first creating a fork of this Github project, then creating a topic branch for the suggested change and pushing that branch to your own fork. Github can then easily create a PR based on that branch.

License

2-clause BSD license, see LICENSE.md

Contributors

• Bert Van Vreckem (maintainer)
• Richard Marko
• Lander Van den Bulcke