Linux setup steps/Apache content compression

From Nick Jenkins

Setting up Apache content compression:

Source.

To enable the required modules; mod_deflate is now used instead of libapache-mod-gzip:

a2enmod deflate

Load the headers module:

a2enmod headers

Then "nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default", and add this to the end of the file (but inside the <VirtualHost> block) to enable mod_deflate, and turn on logging for it.

# ---------------------------------------------------
# -------------- Enabling Mod_Deflate ---------------
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
  # Compress all content, manually excluding specified file types
  # place filter 'DEFLATE' on all outgoing content
  SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
  # exclude uncompressible content via file type
  SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png|rar|zip)$ no-gzip

  # properly handle requests coming from behind proxies
  <IfModule mod_headers.c>
      Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
  </IfModule>

  # Keep a log of compression ratio on each request
  DeflateFilterNote Input instream
  DeflateFilterNote Output outstream
  DeflateFilterNote Ratio ratio
  LogFormat '"%r" %{outstream}n/%{instream}n (%{ratio}n%%)' deflate
  CustomLog /var/log/apache2/deflate.log deflate

  # Properly handle old browsers that do not support compression
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
  BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
</IfModule>
# ---------------------------------------------------

Then check above syntax is OK:

apache2ctl -t

Then restart apache:

/etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Can then check it is working by accessing some pages, and doing:

tail -f /var/log/apache2/deflate.log

Note: Have to paste this into /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl too (if have created it), or otherwise just do HTTPS / SSL setup at the end, which makes things easier.