Installing Apache 2.2 from source on Ubuntu

Two reasons you might want to do this.

• You want to host a Rails application using Mongrel via Apache and mod_proxy_balancer.

• You’re studying in a Website administration module for your 3rd year Software Engineering degree :)

Seriously though, if you don’t want to use mod_proxy_balancer, just do a normal apt-get install of Apache 2 and you’ll be fine. mod_proxy_balancer is only available for Apache 2.2, and currently, that’s not available from the Ubuntu repositories via apt-get.

This article only covers installing Apache 2.2 - I’ll write another one for getting Subversion and PHP working shortly afterwards.

Workspace
If you’ve not got the build-essential package installed yet:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

It’s best to keep all of the source files in a seperate directory so they don’t mess up your home
directory.

cd
mkdir src
cd src

Zlib
So that Apache can compress output to browsers that support it, we’re going to install Zlib first of all:

wget http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz
tar xvfz zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz
cd zlib-1.2.3/
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install

Apache 2.2
Now download the Apache 2.2 source files:

cd ..
wget http://apache.rmplc.co.uk/httpd/httpd-2.2.3.tar.gz

Extract and move into the directory:

tar xvfz httpd-2.2.3.tar.gz
cd httpd-2.2.3/

Now to configure the build of Apache 2.2 that we want:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2 --enable-mods-shared=all --enable-deflate --enable-proxy --enable-proxy-balancer --enable-proxy-http

Besides setting the modules we’d like installed, and the location of the install, this paramater --enable-mods-shared=all is telling Apache 2.2 to build modules so that they can be dynamically loaded when it is started. This means, we can add further modules to our Apache 2.2 install when we like - as we will do with the Subversion modules and PHP.

Once the configuration is complete:

make
sudo make install

Let’s test that it’s working:

sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

Now navigate to http://localhost/ and you should see a message saying “It works!”.

Stop Apache:

sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl stop

Apache at start-up
Now let’s get Apache to start at boot time automatically:

sudo cp /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl /etc/init.d/apachectlsudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/apachectl

What we’re doing here is copying the Apache Control script into the start-up directory.
We just need to add a few lines to the file for it to work nicely:sudo nano /etc/init.d/apachectl
Add the followinig, so the top of the file looks like:

#!/bin/sh
#
# chkconfig: - 85 15
# description: Apache is a web server.

Save the file.

Now we need to register it with the start-up manager:

sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d apachectl defaults

Securing Apache
It’s also a good idea to create a dedicate Apache system user account. It’ll make your install much more secure.

sudo adduser --system apache

Now we just need to make sure that Apache runs under this user. We do that by editting the configuration file:

sudo nano /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

You need to find the lines that say:

User daemon
Group daemon

And change them so they look like:

User apache
Group nogroup

Save the file.
Now, let’s start Apache:

sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

Now to check it’s running under the new user, apache:

ps -aux grep httpd

If you see the word apache in there, it’s working.

Check it’s all working
Now just reboot the system and before logging in, check on another machine by visiting the servers IP in the web browser and you should see the “It works!” message. This means Apache started up correctly automatically.

Building Apache 2.2 from source. Done.