How to Monitor Apache Web Server Load and Page Statistics

In this article, you will learn how to monitor Apache web server load and requests using the mod_status module in your Linux distributions such as CentOS, RHEL, and Fedora.

What is mod_status?

mod_status is an Apache module that helps to monitor web server load and current httpd connections with an HTML interface that can be accessed via a web browser.

Apache’s mod_status shows a plain HTML page containing the information about current statistics of the webserver including.

  • Total number of incoming requests
  • Total number of bytes and counts server
  • The CPU usage of Webserver
  • Server Load
  • Server Uptime
  • Total Traffic
  • Total number of idle workers
  • PIDs with the respective clients and many more.

The default Apache Project enabled their server statistics page to the general public. To have a demo of the busy web site’s status page, visit.

Testing Environment

We have used the following Testing Environment for this article to explore more about mod_status with some practical examples and screen-shots.

  1. Operating System – CentOS 8/7
  2. Application – Apache Web Server
  3. IP Address – 5.175.142.66
  4. DocumentRoot – /var/www/html
  5. Apache Configuration file – /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
  6. Default HTTP Port – 80 TCP
  7. Test Configuration Settings – httpd -t

The prerequisites for this tutorial are that you should already aware of how to install and configure a Basic Apache Server. If you don’t know how to setup Apache, read the following article that might help you in setting up your own Apache Web Server.

  1. Create Your Own Webserver and Hosting A Website in Linux

How to Enable mod_status in Apache

The default Apache installation comes with mod_status enabled. If not, make sure to enable it in the Apache configuration file.

[root@tecmint ~]# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Search for the word “mod_status” or keep scrolling down until you find a line containing.

#LoadModule status_module modules/mod_status.so

If you see a ‘#‘ character at the beginning of “LoadModule”, that means mod_status is disabled. Remove the ‘#‘ to enable mod_status.

LoadModule status_module modules/mod_status.so

Configure mod_status

Now again search for the word “Location” or scroll down until you find a section for mod_status which should look like following.

# Allow server status reports generated by mod_status,
# with the URL of http://servername/server-status
# Change the ".example.com" to match your domain to enable.
#
#<Location /server-status>
#    SetHandler server-status
#    Order deny,allow
#    Deny from all
#    Allow from .example.com
#</Location>

In the above section, uncomment the lines for Location directive, SetHandler, and the directory restrictions according to your needs. For example, I am keeping it simple with the Order Allow, deny and it’s allowed for all.

<Location /server-status>
   SetHandler server-status
   Order allow,deny
   Deny from all
   Allow from all 
</Location>

Note: The above configuration is the default configuration for the default Apache web site (single website). If you’ve created one or more Apache Virtual Hosts, the above configuration will won’t work.

So, basically, you need to define the same configuration for each virtual host for any domains you’ve configured in Apache. For example, the virtual host configuration for mod_status will look like this.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example.com
    ServerName example.com
    ErrorLog logs/example.com-error_log
    CustomLog logs/example.com-access_log common
<Location /server-status>
   SetHandler server-status
   Order allow,deny
   Deny from all
   Allow from example.com 
</Location>
</VirtualHost>

Enable ExtendedStatus

The “ExtendedStatus” settings add more information to the statistics page like CPU usage, request per second, total traffic, etc. To enable it, edit the same httpd.conf file and search for the word “Extended” and Uncomment the line and set the status “On” for ExtendedStatus directive.

# ExtendedStatus controls whether Apache will generate "full" status
# information (ExtendedStatus On) or just basic information (ExtendedStatus
# Off) when the "server-status" handler is called. The default is Off.
#
ExtendedStatus On

Restart Apache

Now make sure that you’ve correctly enabled and configured the Apache server-status page. You can also check for the errors in the httpd.conf configuration using the following command.

[root@tecmint ~]# httpd -t

Syntax OK

Once, you get syntax is OK, you can able to restart the httpd service.

[root@tecmint ~]# service httpd restart
OR
[root@tecmint ~]# systemctl restart httpd
Stopping httpd:                                          [  OK  ]
Starting httpd:                                          [  OK  ]

Access mod_status Page

The Apache status page will be accessible via your domain name with “/server-status” at the following URL’s.

http://serveripaddress/server-status

OR

http://serev-hostname/server-status

You will see something similar to the following page with ExtendedStatus enabled.

Apache mod_status
Apache mod_status View

In the above snapshot, you can see that an HTML interface, which shows all information about server uptime, process Id with its respective client, the page they are trying to access.

It also shows the meaning and usage of all the abbreviations used to display the status which helps us to understand the situation better.

You can also refresh the page every time seconds (say 5 seconds) to see the updated statistics. To set the automated refresh, please add “?refresh=N” at the end of the URL. Where N can be replaced with the number of seconds which you want your page to get refreshed.

http://serveripaddress/server-status/?refresh=5
Apache mod_status Refresh
Apache mod_status Refresh

Command-line Status Page View

You can also view the Apache status page from the command-line interface using the special command-line browsers called links or lynx. You can install them using the default package manager utility called yum as shown below.

# yum install links

OR

# yum install lynx

Once, you’ve installed the, you can get the same statistics on your terminal by using the following command.

[root@tecmint ~]# links http://serveripaddress/server-status
OR
[root@tecmint ~]# lynx http://serveripaddress/server-status
OR
[root@tecmint ~]#  /etc/init.d/httpd fullstatus
Sample Output
                     Apache Server Status for localhost
   Server Version: Apache/2.2.15 (Unix) DAV/2 PHP/5.3.3
   Server Built: Aug 13 2013 17:29:28

   --------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Current Time: Tuesday, 14-Jan-2014 04:34:13 EST
   Restart Time: Tuesday, 14-Jan-2014 00:33:05 EST
   Parent Server Generation: 0
   Server uptime: 4 hours 1 minute 7 seconds
   Total accesses: 2748 - Total Traffic: 9.6 MB
   CPU Usage: u.9 s1.06 cu0 cs0 - .0135% CPU load
   .19 requests/sec - 695 B/second - 3658 B/request
   1 requests currently being processed, 4 idle workers
 .__.__W...

   Scoreboard Key:
   "_" Waiting for Connection, "S" Starting up, "R" Reading Request,
   "W" Sending Reply, "K" Keepalive (read), "D" DNS Lookup,
   "C" Closing connection, "L" Logging, "G" Gracefully finishing,
   "I" Idle cleanup of a worker, "." Open slot with no current process

Srv PID     Acc    M CPU   SS  Req Conn Child Slot     Client        VHost             Request
0-0 -    0/0/428   . 0.30 5572 0   0.0  0.00  1.34 127.0.0.1      5.175.142.66 OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
                                                                               GET
1-0 5606 0/639/639 _ 0.46 4    0   0.0  2.18  2.18 115.113.134.14 5.175.142.66 /server-status?refresh=5
                                                                               HTTP/1.1
                                                                               GET
2-0 5607 0/603/603 _ 0.43 0    0   0.0  2.09  2.09 115.113.134.14 5.175.142.66 /server-status?refresh=5
                                                                               HTTP/1.1
3-0 -    0/0/337   . 0.23 5573 0   0.0  0.00  1.09 127.0.0.1      5.175.142.66 OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
                                                                               GET
4-0 5701 0/317/317 _ 0.23 9    0   0.0  1.21  1.21 115.113.134.14 5.175.142.66 /server-status?refresh=5
                                                                               HTTP/1.1
                                                                               GET
5-0 5708 0/212/213 _ 0.15 6    0   0.0  0.85  0.85 115.113.134.14 5.175.142.66 /server-status?refresh=5
                                                                               HTTP/1.1
6-0 5709 0/210/210 W 0.16 0    0   0.0  0.84  0.84 127.0.0.1      5.175.142.66 GET /server-status
                                                                               HTTP/1.1
7-0 -    0/0/1     . 0.00 5574 0   0.0  0.00  0.00 127.0.0.1      5.175.142.66 OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0

   --------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Srv  Child Server number - generation
    PID  OS process ID
    Acc  Number of accesses this connection / this child / this slot
     M   Mode of operation
    CPU  CPU usage, number of seconds
    SS   Seconds since the beginning of the most recent request
    Req  Milliseconds required to process most recent request
   Conn  Kilobytes transferred this connection
   Child Megabytes transferred this child
   Slot  Total megabytes transferred this slot
   --------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Apache/2.2.15 (CentOS) Server at localhost Port 80

Conclusion

Apache’s mod_status module is a very handy monitoring tool for monitoring the performance of a web server’s activity and can able to highlight problems itself. For more information read the status page that can help you to become a more successful web server administrator.

  1. Apache mod_status Homepage

That’s all for mod_status for now, we’ll come up with some more tricks and tips on Apache in future tutorials. Till then stay Geeky and tuned to Tecmint.com and don’t forget to add your valuable comments.

Tarunika Shrivastava
I am a linux server admin and love to play with Linux and all other distributions of it. I am working as System Engineer with a Web Hosting Company.

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38 thoughts on “How to Monitor Apache Web Server Load and Page Statistics”

  1. I am trying to above module implement but unfortunately this modules has not installed in apache configuration.

    please help me how can I install or enabled this modules. thank you

    Reply
  2. For some reason, this mod_status is not working on my machine. I referred some other sites and then comment # the line Deny from all. Then it started working. How that order works?

    Reply
    • With Apache 2.4+ you need to replace this:

      SetHandler server-status
      Order allow,deny
      Deny from all
      Allow from all

      With this:

      SetHandler server-status
      Require host examplde.com

      Reply
  3. How can I enable this monitoring for a server that is running with a virtual host?

    You mentioned this above configuration will not work – can you reference an article on how to enable it on a machine with a virtual host?

    Reply
  4. mod_status is only for monitoring servers. I have to go onto the server to check out its status. This is very time consuming. If I want to automate this process, as in, if the server hit a certain number of request then it would send a trap or notification telling me I should look into it. Is there a way I can do this?

    Tks

    Reply
  5. Very informative tutorial!

    mod_status is works well on HTTP. But When I enable redirection to port 443 by .htaccess then I get Page not found. Please let me know how I can fix this.

    Reply
  6. Thnx for the guide!

    Note that the syntax for access permissions changed from Apache 2.2 to 2.4.

    Order allow,deny
    Deny from all
    Allow from example.com

    becomes simply

    Require host example.org

    ref: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/upgrading.html

    to make it upgrade safe, it can be written as:

    # Apache 2.4
    Require all granted

    # Apache 2.2
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all

    Reply
  7. Dear Admin I cant find this line in Apache configuration file ( LoadModule status_module modules/mod_status.so ) but i insert manually than i acces through ip and hostname I have no access error? could you tell me whay i #LoadModule line cant find

    Reply
  8. I tried to add my IP as well into allowed list, but still getting error:

    You don’t have permission to access /server-status on this server

    Kindly guide for the solution

    Reply
  9. Hi
    I am trying to enable mod_status, I follow all steps very carefully, but not getting expected result; when I try to access http://IP-address/server-status

    face following error:
    404 Ooops…It looks like the page your are looking for does not exist

    more over there is no file or folder name server-status in DocumentRoot location;

    any idea, I think there should some script in DocumentRoot location that will be called and display a result…

    please help me if you know the reason of this problem;

    thanks
    sani

    Reply
    • when I stop all my virtual hosts, http://IP-address/server-status worsk fine, and when I put

      SetHandler server-status
      Order deny,allow
      Deny from all
      Allow from 127.0.0.1

      inside virtual host ,it gave me 404 Ooops…It looks like the page your are looking for does not exist

      its very urgent please help

      thanks in advance;

      sani

      Reply
    • Doesn’t matter which port you are using for Apache, just enable the server-status module as suggested in the article..that’s it..

      Reply
  10. I have configured server-status likewise. But its showing the following error.

    Forbidden:
    you don’t have permission to access /server-status on this server.

    Please help me.

    Reply
    • Please add your system IP in allow list, for example see the following entry.

      Allow from Your-IP-Address-Here
      
      Reply
  11. I’ve seen many statistics data with the url “http://192.168.114.161/server-status” ,like Server Version,Server Built,,Current Time,Restart Time,Parent Server Generation,Server uptime,Total accesses , but i couldn’t find the “CPU Usage”, i can’t find out what’s wrong,can you help me?

    Reply

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