Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache, is one of the most widely used web servers in the world. The main advantages of Apache are considered to be reliability and configuration flexibility.

In this tutorial, we will install Apache together with Let's Encrypt on Rocky Linux 9.

Ensure your system is up to date:

Run the following command to install Apache:

Run this command to automatically start Apache after every boot:

To start Apache run this command:

Verify if Apache enabled successfully (status should be "active"):

Next, we need to allow HTTP and HTTPS. You can do this in IPtables or firewall.

IPtables:

If you use IPtables, run these commands:

Save changes:

Restart iptables to apply the changes:

Firewalld:

If you are using firewalld, run these commands to allow HTTP and HTTPS:

Create a new Virtual Host configuration file for your domain. Replace yourdomain.ltd with your actual domain:

Paste this content into the file and replace yourdomain.ltd with your actual domain:

Save the file and exit (press "Esc", then type :wq and click "Enter").

Create the document root directory if it does not already exist (replace yourdomain with your actual domain):

Now you need to set the permissions for the document root directory. Run these commands (replace yourdomain with your actual domain):

To check if everything works correctly, create a test HTML page:

Paste this content:

Then restart Apache to apply the changes:

At this point, your test page should be accessible via HTTP. For a secure connection via HTTPS, we need to install a Let's Encrypt certificate, so follow the instructions below.

First of all, install the EPEL repository:

Then install Certbot:

Finally, run Certbot to install SSL certificate for your domain:

You may receive the following error message:

You can ignore it and continue.

You will need to select the domain you want to secure and enter your email address to receive notifications from Let's Encrypt. You will also need to agree to the Terms of Service (mandatory) and agree or disagree to share your email address with Electronic Frontier Foundation (optional).

After that, make sure to restart Apache:

Now you can open your browser, go to the test page and see it with a valid SSL certificate (via HTTPS). Click on the padlock icon in the address bar to see information about the certificate.

Let's Encrypt certificates are valid for 90 days and can be renewed manually or automatically.

To renew manually, run this command:

If the certificate is less than 30 days away from expiration, this command will renew it.

If you want to specify auto-renewal, you can create cronjob to run the above command twice a day automatically:

Add this line to the crontab:

You're all set. When necessary, certbot will renew your certificates and reload Apache to pick up the changes.