- Introduction
- Compiling Apache
- Installing Apache on Unix
- Dynamic Shared Objects
- Binary Distributions
- Windows Installation
- Commercial Distributions
- Recap
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Installing Apache on Unix
There are no practical restrictions on where you keep httpd. In particular, the executable doesn't assume that its configuration files or Web pages are stored in any particular subdirectories relative to its own location—as we will see, all that sort of thing is configurable.
The make utility you used to compile the httpd executable also provides an option for installing it:
make install
Recall that when you originally ran the configure script, you used the --prefix option to specify a home directory for Apache. By default, the make install command will install the httpd executable in a subdirectory called bin under whatever you spec-ified as Apache's home directory.
Continuing the example above, we specified a home directory of "/apache". Therefore, the "make install" command will install httpd in:
/apache/bin/httpd
Higher Security Installation
The default location is not a bad place to keep httpd while you're playing around and getting the configuration settings just the way you want. Once you're ready to put the server on a publicly accessible network, it's safer to put the executable in a more secured location of the directory tree—perhaps /sbin. Continuing the example above:
mv /apache/bin/httpd /sbin/httpd
Also, regardless of where you install httpd, make sure that the new executable has secure ownership and permissions:
chown 0 /sbin/httpd chgrp 0 /sbin/httpd chmod 511 /sbin/httpd
Once you've moved your server out of the default location, you will need to edit your control script and change the setting of the httpd variable to the new location of your executable.
vi bin/apachectl
Once in the apachectl script, change the htppd variable as shown below:
httpd=/the/new/location