Im using Redhat 9 with kernel kernel-2.4.20-13.9. I thought I had installed Apache 2 when I installed Redhat but it apparently did not work. So I went to Apache.org and used these instructions to install Apache http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/install.html
When I do "apachectl start" the prompt just goes to the next line and does what appears to be nothing. So I go to the web browser and enter "http://localhost" and receive "The connection was refused when attempting to contact localhost".

When I enter ps ax | grep httpd the only process I receive is "3853 pts/1 R 0:00 grep httpd"

Im pretty new to Linux so Im sure I've got something wrong however I do have some experience using Apache on Win2K. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Did you install Apache from rpm before? Try doing:

/etc/init.d/httpd start

Then check to see if httpd is running.

I dont think I installed from RPM I used the tarball

when i did /etc/init.d/httpd

it returned "FAILED"