How To Enable Apache Modules in Ubuntu

Enabling new Apache Modules in Ubuntu is an easy task once you learn how. On most systems when you want to enable a new Apache Module you just add a LoadModule directive to your httpd.conf but Ubuntu does it quite a bit differently since it is based off of Debian Linux.

What modules does my system have?

Before you can enable a module you need to know if it's available on your system or not. To check if a particular module has been compiled on your system you should look in the /etc/apache2/mods-available/ directory to see if it is listed there. If it is listed there you are in good shape and can continue with the next step to enable the module. If the Apache module that you want to enable is not there then you will need to seek help elsewhere in order to get it installed/compiled.

The a2enmod command

Now that you have checked to see if the module your want to enable exists on your system you can enable it with the a2enmod command. This is done in the Terminal by typing sudo a2enmod. The a2enmod program will then give you a list of all the modules available and you can type the name of the module you want to enable. The module will then be installed and configured and ready to use.

Restart or Reload Apache

Now that you have enabled the module you need to restart Apache or tell Apache to reload it's configuration files. This is done using either of the following commands: 

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Now you should be done and Apache should be using the module.

Typical Ubuntu Apache Modules

Here is a list of the Apache modules that should be available on most Ubuntu systems:

• actions
• alias
• asis
• auth_basic
• auth_digest
• authn_alias
• authn_anon
• authn_dbd
• authn_dbm
• authn_default
• authn_file
• authnz_ldap
• authz_dbm
• authz_default
• authz_groupfile
• authz_host
• authz_owner
• authz_user
• autoindex
• cache
• cern_meta
• cgid
• cgi
• charset_lite
• dav_fs
• dav
• dav_lock
• dbd
• deflate
• dir
• disk_cache
• dump_io
• env
• expires
• ext_filter
• file_cache
• filter
• headers
• ident
• imagemap
• include
• info
• ldap
• log_forensic
• mem_cache
• mime
• mime_magic
• negotiation
• perl
• php5
• proxy_ajp
• proxy_balancer
• proxy_connect
• proxy_ftp
• proxy_http
• proxy
• rewrite
• setenvif
• speling
• ssl
• status
• suexec
• unique_id
• userdir
• usertrack
• version
• vhost_alias