1. Introduction

1.1. Contributors and Contacts

First I would thank all those people who send questions and suggestions that made a further development of this document possible. It shows me, sharing knowledge is the right way. I would encourage you to send me more suggestion, just write me an email

1.2. Why this document was written

All Linux-distributions I tested, had a bad defaultsetup of Apache. Additionally all major distributions dont have actual versions of Apache.

Finally no commercial Unix comes with Apache preinstalled (Why not?)

Since I'm installing a lot of customized webservers on different Un*xes, I wrote a plaintext document and put it on my website to get access to it at work. Later a friend posted the URL to a mailinglist, and the first questions arrived. So I decided to put more on the page.

After a lot of people requested the document as an “official” HOWTO, I decided to do so.

1.3. What this document is supposed to be

Compiling all the stuff described below needs to know a lot of configure-options that nobody can memorize. Its supposed to be a “copy-paste-ready” text to compile apache and friends

The second goal of this document is, people should lern how to build a full-featured Apache-webserver bythemself to be independant from any Linux distributors.

1.4. What this document doesn't do for you

Its just a Document, not a script that makes the work for you. You have to do all steps by yourself.

1.5. Platforms

The original Document I wrote was for all major Un*x plattforms. Now the HOWTOs are separated for each Plattforms. You will find the same document adapted for the respective Platform for:

Important Notice for users running Linux on IBM S/390 (zSeries): postgres and Jserv wont compile on that system. All other programms and modules mentioned in the HOWTO are working perfectly

Other Un*x-platforms: Feel free to create a guest-account for me on your Un*x platform.

Windows-Users: I'm sorry, I'm too young for an heart-attack ;-)

1.6. Revision History

Revision History
Revision 1.9.7 2001-12-26
Updates of software mentioned in the HOWTO, tested the HOWTO procedures on Linux running on IBM S/390 (zSeries) Machines (See "platforms" for more info), Added some basic support for Tomcat (Binaries only)
Revision 1.9.6 2001-10-27
Updates of software mentioned in the HOWTO, and fixed some bugs
Revision 1.9.5 2001-08-27
Yet another rewrite in Docbook 3.1
Revision 1.9.4 2001-08-26
Updated the Software-Versions metioned in the document, corrected some typos
Revision 1.9.3 2001-06-23
Current Version 2.0.0-pre3 in Linux DocBook format
Revision 1.0.0 2000-08-05
First publication of the html-based document

1.7. New versions of this document

The most recent version of this document you will at http://www.delouw.ch/linux/apache.phtml

New revisions of this document will be announced at http://freshmeat.net/apacompile

1.8. About the author

Luc (in english Luke) is 29 years old, playing around with computers since 20years. Currently he is working as Unix System Engineer for an IT-corporation located in Kloten (Zurich), Switzerland. Main-focus is developping all flavours of innovative Systems running on Linux (and other Un*xes . Further, for all major Un*x platforms all the “impossible” tasks will end up on his desk (yes, its funny and he love it!)