Overview for the impatient

NN must be replaced with the current minor version number, and PREFIX must be replaced with the filesystem path under which the server should be installed. If PREFIX is not specified, it defaults to /usr/local/apache2.

Each section of the compilation and installation process is described in more detail below, beginning with the requirements for compiling and installing Apache HTTPD.

Requirements

The following requirements exist for building Apache:

Disk Space

Make sure you have at least 50 MB of temporary free disk space available. After installation Apache occupies approximately 10 MB of disk space. The actual disk space requirements will vary considerably based on your chosen configuration options and any third-party modules.

ANSI-C Compiler and Build System

Make sure you have an ANSI-C compiler installed. The GNU C compiler (GCC) from the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is recommended (version 2.7.2 is fine). If you don't have GCC then at least make sure your vendor's compiler is ANSI compliant. In addition, your PATH must contain basic build tools such as make.

Accurate time keeping

Elements of the HTTP protocol are expressed as the time of day. So, it's time to investigate setting some time synchronization facility on your system. Usually the ntpdate or xntpd programs are used for this purpose which are based on the Network Time Protocol (NTP). See the Usenet newsgroup comp.protocols.time.ntp and the NTP homepage for more details about NTP software and public time servers.

Perl 5 [OPTIONAL]

For some of the support scripts like apxs or dbmmanage (which are written in Perl) the Perl 5 interpreter is required (versions 5.003 or newer are sufficient). If you have multiple Perl interpreters (for example, a systemwide install of Perl 4, and your own install of Perl 5), you are advised to use the --with-perl option (see below) to make sure the correct one is used by configure. If no Perl 5 interpreter is found by the configure script, you will not be able to use the affected support scripts. Of course, you will still be able to build and use Apache 2.0.

Download

Apache can be downloaded from the Apache HTTP Server download site which lists several mirrors. Most users of Apache on unix-like systems will be better off downloading and compiling a source version. The build process (described below) is easy, and it allows you to customize your server to suit your needs. In addition, binary releases are often not up to date with the latest source releases. If you do download a binary, follow the instructions in the INSTALL.bindist file inside the distribution.

After downloading, it is important to verify that you have a complete and unmodified version of the Apache HTTP Server. This can be accomplished by testing the downloaded tarball against the PGP signature. Details on how to do this are available on the download page and an extended example is available describing the use of PGP.

Extract

Extracting the source from the Apache HTTPD tarball is a simple matter of uncompressing, and then untarring:

This will create a new directory under the current directory containing the source code for the distribution. You should cd into that directory before proceeding with compiling the server.

Configuring the source tree

The next step is to configure the Apache source tree for your particular platform and personal requirements. This is done using the script configure included in the root directory of the distribution. (Developers downloading the CVS version of the Apache source tree will need to have autoconf and libtool installed and will need to run buildconf before proceeding with the next steps. This is not necessary for official releases.)

To configure the source tree using all the default options, simply type ./configure. To change the default options, configure accepts a variety of variables and command line options.

The most important option is the location --prefix where Apache is to be installed later, because Apache has to be configured for this location to work correctly. More fine-tuned control of the location of files is possible with additional configure options.

Also at this point, you can specify which features you want included in Apache by enabling and disabling modules. Apache comes with a Base set of modules included by default. Other modules are enabled using the --enable-module option, where module is the name of the module with the mod_ string removed and with any underscore converted to a dash. You can also choose to compile modules as shared objects (DSOs) -- which can be loaded or unloaded at runtime -- by using the option --enable-module=shared. Similarly, you can disable Base modules with the --disable-module option. Be careful when using these options, since configure cannot warn you if the module you specify does not exist; it will simply ignore the option.

In addition, it is sometimes necessary to provide the configure script with extra information about the location of your compiler, libraries, or header files. This is done by passing either environment variables or command line options to configure. For more information, see the configure manual page.

For a short impression of what possibilities you have, here is a typical example which compiles Apache for the installation tree /sw/pkg/apache with a particular compiler and flags plus the two additional modules mod_rewrite and mod_speling for later loading through the DSO mechanism:

When configure is run it will take several minutes to test for the availability of features on your system and build Makefiles which will later be used to compile the server.

Details on all the different configure options are available on the configure manual page.

Build

Now you can build the various parts which form the Apache package by simply running the command:

Please be patient here, since a base configuration takes approximately 3 minutes to compile under a Pentium III/Linux 2.2 system, but this will vary widely depending on your hardware and the number of modules which you have enabled.

Install

Now it's time to install the package under the configured installation PREFIX (see --prefix option above) by running:

If you are upgrading, the installation will not overwrite your configuration files or documents.

Customize

Next, you can customize your Apache HTTP server by editing the configuration files under PREFIX/conf/.

Have a look at the Apache manual under docs/manual/ or consult http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/ for the most recent version of this manual and a complete reference of available configuration directives.

Test

Now you can start your Apache HTTP server by immediately running:

and then you should be able to request your first document via URL http://localhost/. The web page you see is located under the DocumentRoot which will usually be PREFIX/htdocs/. Then stop the server again by running:

Upgrading

The first step in upgrading is to read the release announcement and the file CHANGES in the source distribution to find any changes that may affect your site. When changing between major releases (for example, from 1.3 to 2.0 or from 2.0 to 2.2), there will likely be major differences in the compile-time and run-time configuration that will require manual adjustments. All modules will also need to be upgraded to accomodate changes in the module API.

Upgrading from one minor version to the next (for example, from 2.0.55 to 2.0.57) is easier. The make install process will not overwrite any of your existing documents, log files, or configuration files. In addition, the developers make every effort to avoid incompatible changes in the configure options, run-time configuration, or the module API between minor versions. In most cases you should be able to use an identical configure command line, an identical configuration file, and all of your modules should continue to work. (This is only valid for versions after 2.0.41; earlier versions have incompatible changes.)

To upgrade across minor versions, start by finding the file config.nice in the build directory of your installed server or at the root of the source tree for your old install. This will contain the exact configure command line that you used to configure the source tree. Then to upgrade from one version to the next, you need only copy the config.nice file to the source tree of the new version, edit it to make any desired changes, and then run: