apache2 package and continued Certbot compatibility

[Joona Hoikkala]

Hello,

The following message is intended for the maintainers of the apache2
package:

We’re maintaining Certbot and it’s Apache plugin on Ubuntu. In the past,
changes to the Apache HTTPd package on different OSes have broken the
way Certbot interacts with web server. We are contacting to let you know
what functionality we are relying on to see if we can find a way to
ensure uninterrupted operability of Certbot on Ubuntu. We would also
love to hear your thoughts about the way we’re currently doing this -
especially if you think there would be a better practice to do some or
all of these actions on Ubuntu.

If possible, we would also like to get notified if some of the
functionality of these interaction points that we depend on changes, so
we can adapt our code before the functionality breaks for the users.

If your distribution’s packaging infrastructure allows tests that could
send notifications over to us, it would be a great thing to have. That
said, we definitely do not want to block your development or maintenance
of Apache HTTPd on Ubuntu, but would merely like to keep our software
compatible with upstream changes.

The integration points:

Configuration structure root: /etc/apache2
Logs directory (used when creating a new VirtualHost for redirects):
/var/log/apache2


Apache calls:

Version check: apache2ctl -v
Restart: apache2ctl graceful
Config test: apache2ctl configtest
List loaded modules: apache2ctl -t -D DUMP_MODULES
List Define’d variables: apache2ctl -t -D DUMP_RUN_CFG
List Include’d configuration files: apache2ctl -t -D DUMP_INCLUDES

We’re also calling a2enmod and and a2dismod scripts to enable / disable
modules (like mod_ssl) if needed.

--
Joona Hoikkala