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Reliable & free! It has to be Apache!
WEB servers come in various shapes and sizes. They run under a variety of operating systems, have varying levels of power and complexity, and range in price from rather expensive to free. One of .....
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WEB servers come in various shapes and sizes. They run under a variety of operating systems, have varying levels of power and complexity, and range in price from rather expensive to free. One of them is Apache.
Apache is special
Apache is maintained by the Apache Software Foundation's Apache Server Project at www.apache.org. The Apache Web server, for those of you who haven't heard of it, is arguably the most popular Web server in use on the Internet today. While Microsoft contends that its Internet Information Server (IIS) is making huge gains, it's still struggling in many ways against Apache. The reasons are not hard to seek. For starters, you don't have to be running Windows to run Apache. It was first developed on the various Unix/Linux/BSD platforms, then recently ported to Win32. The IIS, while a good Web server on the NT platform, is trapped in the "Windows-only" world. While IIS has many handy features, not everyone wants to run NT for their Web server's OS.
Getting Apache
Another reason for Apache's widespread acceptance is its overall stability. The Apache Web server service is near bombproof. Lastly, it is relatively fast. Relative to what you're doing with it. If you're hosting a Website with mostly static content, Apache is a fireball. If you throw tons of CGI scripts at it, while making database calls at the same time, you're going to slow it down. Much of the slowdown will come from your scripts themselves and not Apache.
Apache is available from www.apache.org. While you're downloading the Apache package that's appropriate for your Operating System, be sure to grab the documentation.
If you're a Linux user, the odds are in your favour that Apache has been pre-installed. With the exception of desktop-centric Linux such as Caldera, it's rare that you won't have the Apache server installed. During your Linux installation, if you see an option for "Web services" make sure to select it so that Apache will be installed.
If you're new to the Unix/Linux/BSD world, you should be aware that there are two types of installation packages — source and binary. If you're new to the Unix world, try to download a binary format. A binary is the fully compiled version of the application that's ready to be installed on your system.
A source package is just that, it's the source code to the application. This means you have to compile it into an executable program all by yourself. One often messes up while compiling an application. If you are fortunate, you'll find your error immediately. If you're unlucky, it could be hours, days or weeks before you find out, and then you have to spend time recompiling again to fix your mistakes. Do yourself a favour when first learning Apache — find the binary package for your OS. You can learn the finer points of compilation later.
Installing & running Apache
Those of you running the RedHat Linux distribution may want to take advantage of RedHat's RPM ("RedHat Package Manager") system. Almost identical to a binary, an RPM is further customised to play nicely with other RPMs and provide a consistent interface to installing, updating, and removing binaries. They often entail a loss of flexibility and clarity—for instance, it's not readily apparent where the contents of some packages will end up. That said, for Linux newcomers or when installing a small standard component, RPMs are simple and reliable.
Bear in mind that an Apache RPM may already be installed on your system depending on how Linux was originally installed. To find out, at the shell prompt, type:
rpm -qa | grep apache
If you see apache-1.3.9xxx, an Apache RPM has already been installed and you can skip on to "Starting Apache."
If you don't have an Apache RPM, you must obtain one. RedHat 6.x Onwards ships with Apache-1.x.x-x.i386.rpm in the RedHat/RPMS directory on the installation CD. Or, point your Web browser at ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/current/i386/RedHat/RPMS and pick yourself up a copy.
To install Apache from scratch, read on. Or you can skip on to Starting Apache. Just three more commands than a binary installation and you skip the arduous task of figuring out which binary is the right one for your particular operating system.
Point your Web browser at www.apache.org/dist and download the gzip'd form of the current version of Apache.
Now let's uncompress that archive using gunzip and tar. You should replace the apache_1.3.11.tar.gz below with the name of the gzip'd file you download.
gunzip < apache_1.3.11.tar.gz | tar xvf -
You should end up with an apache_1.3.x directory, x being the particular sub-version of Apache you downloaded. Move into the newly-created directory.
cd apache_1.3.x
Now we'll use configure and make commands to configure, make, and install Apache. If you've not already done so, now would be the time to become root.
./configure
Your screen should look something like:
# ./configure
Configuring for Apache, Version 1.3.11...
Creating Makefile
Creating Configuration.apaci in src
Creating Makefile in src
+ configured for Linux platform
+ setting C compiler to gcc
+ setting C pre-processor to gcc -E
+ checking for system header files
+ adding selected modules
+ checking sizeof various data types
+ doing sanity check on compiler and options ...
Creating Makefile in src/modules/standard
Unless errors are reported (not warnings, mind you), your Apache installation is now configured and we can move on. This is where it gets a bit complex. Make Apache produces screenfulls of scary-looking output, but don't worry — as long as the process doesn't stop suddenly with an errror message, all is as it should be.
Your screen should look something like:
# make
===> src
make[1]: Entering directory `src/httpd/apache_1.3.11'
make[2]: Entering directory `src/httpd/apache_1.3.11/src'
===> src/regex ...
[several lines later] ...
gcc -DLINUX=2 -DUSE_HSREGEX -DUSE_EXPAT -I../lib/expat-lite
-DNO_DL_NEEDED `../apaci` -o ab -L../os/unix
-L../ap ab.o -lap -los -lm -lcrypt
make[2]: Leaving directory `src/httpd/apache_1.3.11/src/support'
<=== src/support
make[1]: Leaving directory `src/httpd/apache_1.3.11'
<=== src
#
Finally, you're ready to install your Apache build.
# make install
And you're done!
Performance Settings
There are multiple performance settings you can activate in Apache. Each of these is designed to prevent slow user connections from hogging up all servers' resources. They can also be used to prevent things like Web spiders from hogging up the resources.
Starting Apache
Let's take your new Apache installation out for a spin.
* If you installed Apache using a binary or from scratch, as root, type /usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl start
* If you used an RPM, as root, type httpd
Point your browser at your brand new Web server, http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1 (Internal Loopback IP Address), substituting your server's hostname for localhost and you should see the default home page.
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