How to Monitor Apache Performance Using mod_status in Ubuntu

While you can always have a peek at Apache log files to get information about your webserver such as active connections, you can get a very detailed overview of your web server’s performance by enabling the mod_status module.

What is the mod_status module?

The mod_status module is an Apache module that allows users to access highly detailed information about Apache’s performance on a plain HTML page. In fact, Apache maintains its own server status page for general public viewing.

You can view status for Apache (Ubuntu) by heading over to the address below:

• https://apache.org/server-status

Check Apache Performance Status

The Apache mod_status makes it possible to serve a plain HTML page containing information such as:

• Server version
• Current day and time in UTC
• Server Uptime
• Server load
• Total traffic
• Total number of incoming requests
• The webserver’s CPU usage
• PIDs with the respective clients and so much more.

Let’s now shift gears and see how you can get up-to-date statistics about Apache web server.

Testing Environment

Operating System: 	Ubuntu 20.04
Application:            Apache HTTP server
Version:                2.4.41
IP address:             34.123.9.111
Document root:          /var/www/html

Enable mod_status in Apache Ubuntu

By default, Apache ships with the mod_status module already enabled. You can verify this by checking the mods_enabled directory by running ls command as shown:

$ ls /etc/apache2/mods-enabled

Check mod_status Module in Apache Ubuntu

Ensure that the status.conf and status.load files are present. If not, you need to enable mod_status module by invoking the command:

$ sudo /usr/sbin/a2enmod status

Configure mod_status in Apache Ubuntu

As stated earlier, the mod_status is already enabled. However, additional tweaks are required for you to access the server-status page. To do so, you need to modify the status.conf file.

$ sudo vim /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/status.conf 

Set the Require ip directive to reflect the IP address of the machine that you will be accessing the server from.

Configure mod_status Module in Apache Ubuntu

Save the changes and restart Apache for the changes to take effect to confirm the status as shown:

$ sudo systemctl restart apache2

Then verify the status of Apache and ensure it up and running.

$ sudo systemctl status apache2

Check Apache Status in Ubuntu

Thereafter, browse the web server’s URL as shown.

http://server-ip/server-status

You will get a status HTML page displaying a host of Apache’s information and an array of statistics as shown.

Monitor Apache Ubuntu Performance

NOTE: To have the page refresh after every a given time interval, for example, 5 seconds, append the 「?refresh=5」 at the end of the URL.

http://server-ip/server-status?refresh=5

This provides a better monitoring capacity of your server’s performance than the plain static HTML page earlier on.

That’s all for now about the mod_status module. Stay Tuned to Tecmint for so much more.