Change document root, port and index

Lab objective

Serve home.html from /var/www/course-site on TCP 8080. Use a dedicated lab configuration and retain an SSH session. Create the root and page first:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/course-site
printf '<h1>Course site on 8080</h1>\n' | sudo tee /var/www/course-site/home.html

Apache configuration

On AL2023 save as /etc/httpd/conf.d/course-site.conf. On Ubuntu save as /etc/apache2/sites-available/course-site.conf and enable with sudo a2ensite course-site. Add Listen 8080 exactly once; on Ubuntu it can go in ports.conf instead of the site file.

Listen 8080
<VirtualHost *:8080>
    ServerName course.example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/course-site
    DirectoryIndex home.html
    <Directory /var/www/course-site>
        Require all granted
        Options -Indexes
        AllowOverride None
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Test with apachectl configtest on AL2023 or apache2ctl configtest on Ubuntu, then reload httpd or apache2. <VirtualHost *:8080> alone does not make Apache listen on 8080; Listen does.

Nginx equivalent

Use this as an alternative, not concurrently on the same 8080 socket. Save under an included conf.d path.

server {
    listen 8080;
    server_name course.example.com;
    root /var/www/course-site;
    index home.html;
    location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; }
}

Run sudo nginx -t then reload. Test:

curl -i -H 'Host: course.example.com' http://127.0.0.1:8080/
sudo ss -lntp

Network and host controls

Allow 8080 only from your lab client's address in the EC2 security group. A host firewall, if enabled, must also permit the traffic. Under SELinux enforcing policy, a nonstandard listener or new directory may need an appropriate port type or file context; inspect getenforce and audit logs. Do not blindly copy policy changes into an unrelated server.

Verify, diagnose, revert

Expected result: HTTP 200 and the custom heading. 404 suggests wrong root/path/index; 403 suggests directory permission or policy; timeout suggests a network boundary. Restore the original config or remove only this lab site, test syntax, reload and remove the temporary security-group rule. Confirm port 8080 is no longer listening if it was lab-only.

Official reference

Apache core directives

Interview and revision check

Why does an Apache VirtualHost on 8080 need a Listen directive?

VirtualHost defines request handling for that address/port. Listen creates the listener; defining the virtual host alone is insufficient.