Apache Installation and Configuration through source code

In this example we extract the source code to a directory under /usr/local/src/

cp httpd-2.0.46.tar.gz /usr/local/src

 cd /usr/local/src

 gunzip httpd-2.0.46.tar.gz

 tar -xvf httpd-2.0.46.tar

 rm -f httpd-2.0.46.tar

 cd httpd-2.0.46

You will see quite a few options there, we will set the prefix (the directory to install apache, we picked /usr/local/apache2) and also tell it which modules to compile and install. We will tell configure to compile and install all modules as shared DSO libraries, that way we can easily enable and disable them in the httpd.conf file. Here's how we ran configure:

 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2 --enable-mods-shared=all

Compile Apache Now to compile apache we run make this compiles the source code into executable binaries.

 make

Installing Apache The next step copies the binaries into the install directory, and sets up the modules.

make install

Starting/Stopping/Restarting Apache Now to start/stop apache use apachectl in the bin directory of your install dir.

 cd /usr/local/apache2/bin
 
 ./apachectl start
 
 ./apachectl stop
 
 ./apachectl restart

A script for init.d (optional) Here's a script you can save to /etc/init.d/httpd it is a modified version of the one that came in the rpm for Apache 2.0.40

#!/bin/bash
#
# Startup script for the Apache Web Server
#
# chkconfig: - 85 15
# description: Apache is a World Wide Web server.  It is used to serve \
#              HTML files and CGI.
# processname: httpd
# pidfile: /usr/local/apache2/logs/httpd.pid
# config: /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/httpd ]; then
        . /etc/sysconfig/httpd
fi

# This will prevent initlog from swallowing up a pass-phrase prompt if
# mod_ssl needs a pass-phrase from the user.
INITLOG_ARGS=""

# Path to the apachectl script, server binary, and short-form for messages.
apachectl=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl
httpd=/usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd
pid=$httpd/logs/httpd.pid
prog=httpd
RETVAL=0


# The semantics of these two functions differ from the way apachectl does
# things -- attempting to start while running is a failure, and shutdown
# when not running is also a failure.  So we just do it the way init scripts
# are expected to behave here.
start() {
        echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
        daemon $httpd $OPTIONS
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/httpd
        return $RETVAL
}
stop() {
        echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
        killproc $httpd
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/httpd $pid
}
reload() {
        echo -n $"Reloading $prog: "
        killproc $httpd -HUP
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
}

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
  start)
        start
        ;;
  stop)
        stop
        ;;
  status)
        status $httpd
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
  restart)
        stop
        start
        ;;
  condrestart)
        if [ -f $pid ] ; then
                stop
                start
        fi
        ;;
  reload)
        reload
        ;;
  graceful|help|configtest|fullstatus)
        $apachectl $@
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
  *)
        echo $"Usage: $prog {start|stop|restart|condrestart|reload|status"
  echo $"|fullstatus|graceful|help|configtest}"
        exit 1
esac

exit $RETVAL

Next run chkconfig to setup runlevels for which httpd will run:

chkconfig --add httpd
 
 chkconfig --level 2345 httpd on
 
 chkconfig --list