Speed up Apache webserver by including htaccess mod_rewrite rules in VirtualHosts / httpd.conf

Wednesday, 12th November 2014

speed-up-apache-through-include-htaccess-from-config
There are plenty of Apache Performance Optimization things to do on a new server. However many sysadmins miss  .htaccess mod_rewrite rules whole optimization often leads to a dramatic performance benefits and low webserver responce time, making website much more attractive for both Search Engine Crawlers and End User experience.

Normally most Apache + PHP CMS systems, websites, blogs etc. are configured to use various goodies of .htaccess files (mostly mod_rewrite rules, directory htpasswd authentication  and allow forbid directives). All most popular open-source Content management systems  like Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, TYPO3, Symphony CMS are configured to get use  .htaccess file usually living in the DocumentRoot of a virtualhost ( website/s )httpd.conf , apache2.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/customvhost.com or whichever config the Vhost resides…

It is also not uncommon practice to enable .htaccess files to make programmers life easier (allowing the coder to add and remove URL rewrite rules that makes URL pretty and SEO friendly, handle website redirection or gives live to the framework like it is the case with Zend PHP Framework).

However though having the possibility to get the advantages of dynamically using .htaccess inside site DocRoot or site's subdirectories is great for developers it is not a very good idea to have the .htaccess turned on Production server environment.

Having

AllowOverride All

switched on for a directory in order to have .htaccess enabled, makes the webserver lookup for .htaccess file and re-read its content dynamically on each client request.
This has a negative influence on overall server performance and makes Apache preforked childs or workers (in case of mpm-worker engine used) to waste time parsing .htaccess file leading to slower request processing.

Normally a Virtualhost with enabled .htaccess looks like so:

<VirtualHost 192.168.0.5:80>
ServerName your-website.com:80 …
DocumentRoot /var/www/website
<Directory /var/www/website>
AllowOverride All …
</Directory> …
</VirtualHost>

And VirtualHost configured to keep permanently loaded mod_rewrite .htaccess rules in memory on Apache server start-up.
 

<VirtualHost 192.168.0.5:80>
ServerName your-website.com:80 …
DocumentRoot /var/www/website
<Directory /var/www/website>
AllowOverride None
Include /var/www/website/.htaccess …
</Directory> …
</VirtualHost>

Now CMS uses the previous .htaccess rules just as before, however to put more rewrite rules into the file you will need to restart webserver which is a downside of using rewrite rules through the Include directive. Using the Include directive instead of AllowOverride leads to 7 to 10% faster individual page loads.

I have to mention Include directive though faster has a security downside because .htaccess files loaded with Include option (uses mod_include) via httpd.conf doesn't recognize <Directory> … </Directory> set security rules. Also including .htaccess from configuration on Main Website directory, could make any other sub-directories .htaccess Deny / Allow access rules invalid and this could expose site to  security risk. Another security downside is because Include variable allows loading a full subset of Apache directives (including) loading other Apache configuration files (for example you can even override Virtualsthost pre-set directives such as ErrorLog, ScriptAlias etc.) and not only .htaccess standard directives allowed by AllowOverride All. This gives a potential website attacker who gains write permissions over the included /var/www/website/.htaccess access to this full set of VirtualHost directives and not only .htaccess standard allowed.

Because of the increased security risk most people recommend not to use Include .htaccess rules, however for those who want to get the few percentage page load acceleration of using static Include from Apache config, just set your Included .htaccess file to be owned by user/group root, e.g.:

chown root:root /var/www/website/.htaccess

Share this on:

Download PDFDownload PDF

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply

CommentLuv badge