CentOS 7 installation and deployment

This guide deploys Fast-Https on CentOS and other yum-based distributions from an .rpm package. Installation registers a system service with start-on-boot and automatic restart. For other methods, see Install on Ubuntu and Archive deployment.

Before you start

• Run every command in the server’s terminal with administrative rights. Log in as root, or prefix each command with sudo.
• The default site uses ports 80 and 443. On a cloud server, allow both in the console first and make sure no other program occupies them.
• Download the package from Gitee Releases or GitHub Releases; use the latest version shown on that page.

1 Check the architecture and download the package

.rpm is the package format used by CentOS and the RHEL family. Different processors need different packages, so check yours first:

uname -m

• x86_64 → download the package whose filename contains amd64 (most cloud servers)
• aarch64 → download the package whose filename contains arm64

The download command has two version numbers, both taken from the latest release: VER is the tag on the releases page (with a v), and PKG is the version inside the filename (without the v). For example, tag v1.6.0 corresponds to 1.6.0 in the filename:

VER=v1.6.0
PKG=1.6.0
wget -O fast-https.rpm "https://gitee.com/ncepu-bj/fast-https/releases/download/$VER/fast-https_${PKG}_linux_amd64.rpm"
ls -lh fast-https.rpm

Seeing the file and its size after ls -lh means the download worked. On an aarch64 machine, replace amd64 at the end with arm64.

2 Install

yum install -y ./fast-https.rpm
rpm -qi fast-https

-y answers installation prompts automatically and ./ means “this file in the current directory”. yum resolves the ca-certificates and logrotate dependencies, then prints the configuration, site and log directories and the suggested start command. rpm -qi prints the package name, version and architecture, confirming the installation.

Installed file locations (you will need these when editing configuration or reading logs):

The pid file records the process ID; the systemd unit is the service’s configuration text. Run fast-https config path at any time to print the resolved locations.

3 Start and enable at boot

The package registers a systemd service named fast-https.service. systemd is the component that manages background services on Linux; systemctl is the command used to control it.

systemctl enable --now fast-https.service
systemctl is-active fast-https.service
systemctl status fast-https.service --no-pager

enable --now starts the service immediately and also enables it at boot. is-active should print active; status shows more detail and recent log lines.

The unit already sets Restart=on-failure (restart after a crash), RestartSec=2s and ExecReload=/usr/bin/fast-https reload, so none of that needs manual configuration.

4 Verify the default site

curl -sS -o /dev/null -w 'HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/
curl -sk -o /dev/null -w 'HTTPS %{http_code} TLS=%{ssl_verify_result}\n' https://localhost/

Both should return 200, the status code for a successful request. -k skips certificate verification because the certificate generated on first start is self-signed; TLS=0 indicates the TLS connection itself is healthy.

The default site listens on 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS, HTTP/2). On a cloud server, open http://<server public IP>/ in a browser on your own computer — localhost refers to the server itself and will not work from your computer. A browser warning about an untrusted certificate is expected for a self-signed certificate; use a certificate matching your domain for a public service.

Read service logs with journalctl -u fast-https.service -n 30 --no-pager; structured logs are written under /var/log/fast-https/.

5 Manage the service

The package registers fast-https.service, so use systemctl for day-to-day management:

systemctl start fast-https.service                  # start
systemctl enable --now fast-https.service          # start and enable at boot
systemctl is-active fast-https.service             # check whether it is running
systemctl status fast-https.service --no-pager     # inspect status
systemctl restart fast-https.service              # restart after a config change
fast-https reload                                 # or just reapply configuration
journalctl -u fast-https.service -n 30 --no-pager # read recent logs
systemctl disable --now fast-https.service        # stop and disable startup at boot

6 Troubleshooting

Next steps

For a public deployment, set server_name to the hostname or IP clients will use. To publish your own site or configure a reverse proxy, see the Tutorials section in the sidebar.