White-listing IP addresses for your Apache virtual hosts

I tried setting up some sites on public hosting company where I needed to set it up in a way where only specified IP addresses are allowed to access them. Below is what I did.

Basic config

Below is the basic configuration:

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<Directory "/srv/httpd/htdocs/mydomain.com">     Options Indexes FollowSymLinks     AllowOverride All     Order deny,allow     Allow from 127.0.0.1     Allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx     Allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx     Deny from all </Directory>

Organized

Since I’m doing this IP blocking for many sites, it make sense to simplify the configuration so that I only need to edit a single list of IP that would apply to all sites. What I did is put the config on file and include it on each virtual host config. Below is the filename and the sample content.

File: /etc/httpd/block-world.conf

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Order deny,allow Allow from 127.0.0.1 Allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx Allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx Deny from all

Then for each virtual host, I include the file like this:

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<Directory "/srv/httpd/htdocs/mydomain.com">     Options Indexes FollowSymLinks     AllowOverride All     Include /etc/httpd/block-world.conf </Directory>

That’s it. Share and enjoy.