Compiling Apache 2.4 on Ubuntu 12.04

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve decided that I need to up my game when it comes to webservers. However I’m not yet ready to switch to Nginx or one of the other webservers out in the wild as I need something up and running rapidly.

Granted the numbers are definitely against Apache in a lot of benchmarks but historically I’ve always had a good experience and the entry level makes it much more appropriate for me to stick with it.

However Apache 2.2 is rather long in the tooth, thankfully 2.4 has been out for a while now. The problem I have is that I tend to favour Ubuntu as a platform and there is no sign of a 2.4 version appearing on the horizon anytime soon as they are waiting for it to be implemented upsteam in Debian before including it in Ubuntu.

Now there are PPAs available out there but im not overly happy using them (especially on production environments) So the only option is to compile.

First thing is to install all the dependencies we are going to need. Thankfuly ubuntu has a nice and simple way of handling this.

apt-get build-dep apache2

We can then download the source code and start the compilation.

So from the root of our new copy of the source we need to run our configure.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2 \
 --enable-mods-shared=all \
 --enable-http \
 --enable-deflate \
 --enable-expires \
 --enable-slotmem-shm \
 --enable-headers \
 --enable-rewrite \
 --enable-proxy \
 --enable-proxy-balancer \
 --enable-proxy-http \
 --enable-proxy-fcgi \
 --enable-mime-magic \
 --enable-log-debug \
 --with-mpm=event

You will notice that I’m installing it using the event mpm. Hopefully I’ll be covering more about the event mpm in the future.

Next we need to run make

make && make install

Once that’s complete you should be able to run

/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

and get the “it works” message through your webrowser when accessing the server IP.

Dont forget to configure apache to suit your specific requirements.

Something that will come up is how to start apache on boot. Seeing as Ubuntu uses Upstart it makes sense to utilise it for controlling apache.

So in the file `/etc/ini/apache.conf` we need to put

# apache2 - http server
#
# Apache is a web server that responds to HTTP and HTTPS requests.
# Required-Start: $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog
# Required-Stop: $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog

author "Matt Cockayne <matt@zucchi.co.uk"
description "Apache 2.4 HTTP Server"

start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]

console output

pre-start script
 mkdir -p /var/run/apache2 || true
 install -d -o www-data /var/lock/apache2 || true
 # ssl_scache shouldn't be here if we're just starting up.
 # (this is bad if there are several apache2 instances running)
 rm -f /var/run/apache2/*ssl_scache* || true
end script

# Give up if restart occurs 10 times in 30 seconds.
respawn limit 10 30
respawn

script
 if test -f /usr/local/apache2/bin/envvars; then
 . /usr/local/apache2/bin/envvars
 fi
 ULIMIT_MAX_FILES="ulimit -S -n `ulimit -H -n`"
 if [ "x$ULIMIT_MAX_FILES" != "x" ] ; then
 $ULIMIT_MAX_FILES
 fi

 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start -D FOREGROUND
end script

This is a rather simple upstart script and I will be looking to update it at some point… but it works

Once that’s done you should find that on reboot Apache will start and take advantage of all the management features of upstart including attempting to respawn Apache should it end unexpectedly. You should also be able to then use the following commands to control Apache.

# how to start start apache
start apache
# or 
initctl start apache

# how to stop apache
stop apache
# or 
initctl stop apache

# how to restart apache
restart apache 
# or 
initctl restart apache

# check the status of apache 
status apache
# or
initctl status apache

I generally tend to avoid using the apachectl script found at /usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl once upstart takes control.

Compiling PHP 5.4 on Ubuntu 12.04

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So recently I’ve been working with PHP 5.4 a LOT. Unfortunately Ubuntu (my main dev environment) is behind the times. So I’m resorting to compiling PHP manually.

Not a daunting as it may first appear. The really tricky part is working out your dependencies and `configure` script.

Hence the reason for this post as a reminder for myself and others that may want to do a quick compile. (I would recommend that if your compiling for a production/live environment that you make sure you understand what it is your compiling though before just using what’s here)

So where to start. Dependencies first I think

Ubuntu allows you to install dependencies for building source `apt-get build-deps`. We will use this and install any extras we may need.

apt-get install \
libxml2 \
libxml2-dev \
libssl-dev \
pkg-config \
curl \
libcurl4-nss-dev \
enchant \
libenchant-dev \
libjpeg8 \
libjpeg8-dev \
libpng12-0 \
libpng12-dev \
libvpx1 \
libvpx-dev \
libfreetype6 \
libfreetype6-dev \
libt1-5 \
libt1-dev \
libgmp10 \
libgmp-dev \
libicu48 \
libicu-dev \
mcrypt \
libmcrypt4 \
libmcrypt-dev \
libpspell-dev \
libedit2 \
libedit-dev \
libsnmp15 \
libsnmp-dev \
libxslt1.1 \
libxslt1-dev

And now the configure

./configure \
--prefix=/usr/local/php \
--with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs \
--enable-fpm \
--with-fpm-user=www-data \
--with-fpm-group=www-data \
--with-config-file-path=/usr/local/php/conf \
--with-config-file-scan-dir=/usr/local/php/conf.d \
--enable-debug \
--with-openssl \
--with-kerberos \
--with-zlib \
--enable-calendar \
--with-curl \
--with-curlwrappers \
--with-enchant \
--enable-exif \
--enable-ftp \
--with-gd \
--with-jpeg-dir=/usr \
--with-png-dir=/usr \
--with-vpx-dir=/usr \
--with-freetype-dir=/usr \
--with-t1lib \
--enable-exif \
--enable-gd-native-ttf \
--enable-gd-jis-conv \
--with-gettext \
--with-gmp \
--with-mhash \
--enable-intl \
--enable-mbstring \
--with-mcrypt \
--with-mysql \
--with-mysqli \
--enable-pcntl \
--with-pdo-mysql \
--with-pdo-pgsql \
--with-pgsql \
--with-pspell \
--with-libedit \
--with-readline \
--enable-shmop \
--with-snmp \
--enable-soap \
--enable-sockets \
--enable-sysvmsg \
--enable-sysvshm \
--with-xsl \
--enable-zip \
--with-pear \
--enable-zend-signals \
--enable-maintainer-zts

Once these are done then we follow the standard make process. Notice we are also running make test… very important as it givges more data for the developers to work with.

make && make test && make install

The next thing is configuring your php.ini file as the install doesn’t have one yet so we copy either the production or development default from the source code to the new conf dir and edit to suit your needs.

cp {php-source-dir}/php.ini-(development|production) /usr/local/php/conf

Thats it. All ready to roll… almost, this installation is the one I use for use with a webserver so you will want to add the appropriate directives to apache.

LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so

AddHandler php5-script .php
AddType text/html .php

12-04 on PHP Boy Scout

Compiling Apache 2.4 on Ubuntu 12.04

Compiling PHP 5.4 on Ubuntu 12.04