Category: Web Server

Web Server Stuff

Set Timezone for MYSQL / PHP
After setting system time, I discovered that mysql and php services didn’t also update the timezone settings. Here’s how to make sure they also reflect the correct timezone.

First locate all the php.ini files in /etc
```
cd /etc/
find . | grep php.ini
./php/7.4/apache2/php.ini
./php/7.4/cli/php.ini
```
now edit these files and add the timezone info
```
nano ./php/7.4/apache2/php.ini
```
add this to the [Date] block:
```
[Date]
date.timezone = "America/New_York"
```
For mysqld portion, first copy timezone data into mysql tables:
```
mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | mysql -u root mysql
```
Now edit the mysqld.cnf file:
```
nano /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf
```
And add this to the [mysqld] block:
```
[mysqld]
default-time-zone='America/New_York'
```
Finally do a service restart:
```
systemctl restart mysql
systemctl restart apache2
```
That’s It, Enjoy!
September 21, 2021
Simple HTTP Basic Auth on Apache2
Say you want to create a simple password protected folder in order to share some sensitive documents or what have you. Using apache2 and HTTP Basic Auth, this can be accomplished in only a few commands.

An Example of simple HTTP Basic Auth Login

First, create a folder in your web directory.
```
sudo mkdir /var/www/html/protected
```
Then, you will want to setup the username/password you want to use for the login.
```
sudo htpasswd -c /var/www/basic_auth_passwords myusername
```
The above command creates a file called basic_auth_passwords in /var/www, and will prompt you for the password for “myusername”, like below:
```
New password: 
Re-type new password: 
Adding password for user myusername
```
Make sure this file is not located in your webserver’s html directory, accessible to the outside world, but is in a location apache can read.

Next, we will be adding the directives to an .htaccess file located in the protected directory.

Remember to add the correct “AllowOverride” directive in your sites-enabled .conf file if you are running your own web server, such as:
```
<Directory /var/www/html/protected/>
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>
```
Here’s a quick example of editing your default .conf file that will be present after a fresh install:
```
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf
```
And have something like this inside that file:
```
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html
    <Directory /var/www/html/protected/>
        AllowOverride All
    </Directory>
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
```
So, now that we are certain the .htaccess file will work as intended, we can create it in the protected folder:
```
sudo nano /var/www/html/protected/.htaccess
```
And have the following inside the file:
```
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Files"
AuthBasicProvider file
AuthUserFile "/var/www/basic_auth_passwords"
Require valid-user
```
Next, we will want to restart apache to make sure the changes take effect:
```
sudo systemctl restart apache2
```
Now, we can put all the files we want in our protected folder, and the browser will prompt for the login we created before allowing access:

Basic Auth Login Screen

After logging in we will be able to access our protected files:

Example Protected Folder

For more information consult the apache docs.

Thanks for reading, and good luck with your HTTP Basic Auth protected files and folders!
September 7, 2021

Category: Web Server

Set Timezone for MYSQL / PHP

Simple HTTP Basic Auth on Apache2