Httpd RHEL Compilation

External

• http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/install.html

Internal

• httpd Installation

Overview

This is the Apache httpd compilation/installation procedure. It implies that httpd is compiled from source. If you plan to install httpd with yum, go directly to yum installation. The procedure was tested on RHEL and Mac. If you compile on Mac, make sure to follow the advice from "Compilation on Mac" section, below.

Download

Download from http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi and optionally place in the local archive directory.

wget http://mirror.cogentco.com/pub/apache//httpd/httpd-2.2.17.tar.gz

Older releases may not be on mirrors, but they can be downloaded directly from the apache web site: http://archive.apache.org/dist/httpd.

Extract

The sources can be extracted as a non-root user.

cd src
gunzip < ../archive/httpd-2.2.17.tar.gz | tar xfv -  

Configure Compilation

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/programs/configure.html

Compilation can be configured as a non-root user.

cd httpd-2.2.17
./configure \
  --prefix /opt/httpd-2.2.17[-worker] \
  --enable-so \
  --enable-expires=shared \
  --with-included-apr

Compilation Configuration Notes

Shared Modules Option

It is a good idea to compile httpd with shared module option enabled and load them dynamically as needed. For that, the Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) capability must be enabled at compilation, with:

--enable-so

For more details on Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) capability, see

Static Modules vs. Dynamic Modules

APR

configure may complain about not finding APR. I worked around this by using --with-included-apr in configure configuration.

SSL Compilation

If you need SSL, compile the latest OpenSSL (see [OpenSSL#Compilation]) and then

...
--enable-ssl 
--with-ssl=/data/openssl-1.0.2/
...

If you use SSL, when running httpd, you need to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to the OpenSSL lib directory:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/data/openssl-1.0.2/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Compilation on Mac

Compilation on Mac

Various Module Configuration Requirements

worker MPM Compilation

mod_expires Compilation

mod_proxy Compilation

mod_proxy_ajp Compilation

Cleaning configuration

The only option I discovered so far is to completely remove the source tree. I am sure others exist ... if I find them, add them here.

Configuration Examples

Example 1

Version 2.2.15

./configure --prefix=/cust/soe/opt/apache/2.2.15_without_mod_proxy 
            --enable-logio 
            --disable-proxy 
            --enable-rewrite 
            --enable-ssl 
            --enable-vhost-alias 
            --enable-headers 
            --enable-dav 
            --enable-dav-fs 
            --enable-modules=ssl 
            --with-ssl=/cust/soe/opt/openssl/1.0.0/ 
            --with-included-apr 
            --enable-dav-lock 
            --enable-deflate 
            --enable-so 
            --with-mpm=worker 

We disabled mod_proxy so we can use the version included in mod_cluster.

Example 2

We use mod_proxy:

#!/bin/bash

$(dirname $0)/configure \
 --prefix /data/httpd-2.2.29-worker-mpm \
 --enable-so \
 --with-included-apr \
 --enable-expires=shared \
 --with-mpm=worker \
 --enable-proxy \
 --enable-proxy-connect \
 --enable-proxy-http \
 --enable-proxy-ajp \
 --enable-proxy-balancer \
 --disable-cgi \
 --enable-ssl \
 --with-ssl=/data/openssl-1.0.2

mod_cluster Recommended Configuration

1. Apply http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/mod_cluster/trunk/native/mod_proxy_cluster/mod_proxy_ajp.patch (optional).

2. Configure:

./configure  --prefix=apache_installation_directory \
  --with-mpm=worker \
  --enable-mods-shared=most \
  --enable-maintainer-mode \
  --with-expat=builtin \
  --enable-ssl \
  --enable-proxy=shared \
  --enable-proxy-http=shared \
  --enable-proxy-ajp=shared \
  --disable-proxy-balancer=shared \
  --enable-so 

Compile

Can be built as a non-root user.

make

Install

Can be installed as a non-root user, as long as the user has write access to the target directory.

For more details on how to create the operational account, jump ahead to "Create the Operational Account" section and then come back here.

make install