Deploy Apache mod_status for analysis purposes

The Airlock Gateway's web listener is based on the Apache HTTP server. To analyze certain problems, it may be helpful to deploy the Apache mod_status module.

The following description explains how it can be easily deployed for Airlock Gateway 7.6 and later versions.

Deployment

Since the mod_status module serves its information via a virtual host on the Gateway, it is strongly recommended to limit access to the module and its information.

  • Limited access can be assured by:
  • Configuring a special virtual host that is exclusively accessible over the internal network.
  • OR

  • Configuring an access restriction via the optional authorization module mod_authz_host. The latter is described in the below example.

Example configuration

This example enables mod_status for all virtual hosts via the global Apache Expert Settings since this is the most common approach. However, Apache status pages may be enabled non-globally for specific virtual hosts in the Expert Settings on the virtual host detail page.

The mod_status module generates status pages that contain a full set of Apache server information – no matter whether the module has been enabled globally or for individual virtual hosts.

Add the following line to load the status module:

copy
LoadModule status_module bin/mod_status.so

In our example, the status information should be available for all publicly accessible virtual hosts. For security reasons, this requires loading the authorization module by adding the following line to the global Apache Expert Settings:

copy
LoadModule authz_host_module bin/mod_authz_host.so

To enable the serving of the status information, a Location block with the SetHandler server-status directive must be configured via Expert Settings. The Require ip directive is used to restrict access to a certain range of IP addresses.

Example:

copy
<Location "/server-status"> 
    SetHandler server-status 
    Require ip 192.168.0.0/24 
</Location>

It is not necessary to configure a mapping for Location, because it will be served directly by the Apache HTTP server. For further information refer to the Apache server module documentation.

Test

To check if the module is working, access the configured Virtual Host on the configured Location path:

copy
curl https://virtual-host/server-status