I've been messing with this linux box for a little while now, and I finally got some free time to install apache onto it. I also wanted to include mod_perl and php into the client, so I went out and grabbed those packages and installed them as well.
So, here I am, compiling apache, everything goes very well, no dependency errors, nothing like that. I've got all the right libraries for it. I went ahead and activated all of the modules in the configure, like this:
I'm not quite sure why I installed it to /usr/local ... that's a problem, I'd like to get rid of it from there. How would I go about doing that? Is there an UNDelete function of make to get rid of it in /usr/local?

So, anyways, I go to /usr/local/bin/apachectl start
It looks like it starts fine to me. I check it with ps, no instance of httpd anywhere. I check the configuration file, no, it's set to standalone. The variables all look correct, looks like the packages are correct, nothing's wrong. I went ahead and checked it with my client machine on the browser, no dice.
I go back to the configure, re-configure it to not use any extra modules at all, and tell it to install to the same place again. Still, no dice. I went back and investigated my packages and re-configured and re-compiled again, this time only activating the php and the perl modules, thinking that may be the problem. I checked the configuration file again, wiped it out and remade it again from the old copy I had saved originally. Still nothing.

So, what went wrong? Any clues? Need any more info? I probably didn't give you enough to figure out what went wrong. Thanks in advance for your help!


system:
PII 400 64 MB memory, 8 gig hd, running RH 6.2 custom (with most off all the gunk anmd undeeded programs removed). It runs in the corner with just a keyboard attached to it (to get it past the POST). It functions as my ip_masq server, I run a client machine behind it. The express reason for setting up this server was to serve web pages for my dorm and a few other people with it.

tarballs used:
apache_1.3.22.tar.gz
mod_perl-1.26.tar.gz
php-4.0.4.tar.gz
Order of installation of packages:
compiled and installed perl with the attachment for apache in there
compiled and installed php4 with the --with-apache flag in configure
compiled and installed apache with the modules enabled as DSO-enabled modules

I'm no pro at Apache, so this is just a suggestion. When you do the apachectl start, make sure that you are root. In order for apache to use the default http port (80) you need to execute the command as root.

Also... I think that you can uninstall it by going into your src tree and doing a make uninstall.

hth
leo

I installed everything as the root user, so it's not a problem with the <1024 port deal. I tried make uninstall in the directory of the source, but no dice. I'm sure there's a way to peer into the ruleset to find out what your possibilities are, but I don't know the command.
Any other suggestions?

take a look at /usr/local/logs/error_log, /var/log/messages, and your /var/log/syslog (thats the slack location of them, probally different for RH so, substitute /var/log with the default RH log path, and messages is just the general message log and syslog is your system error/message log). If you can't make headds or tails out of it post anything that might be related here and we'll try to help out.

I have no idea where it's getting the groupid of 4294967295 from ... it should be a group of httpd, right? the idea being that each user belongs to the group httpd, so that apache can read into the personal directory the way its supposed to. Where do I go to tell apache to use a certain user?
This is mighty confusing here. I thought i understood how things should work ... NOPE. Thanks for your help, guys

make sure your actually running apachectl as root, if you are and its still not working paste your httpd.conf here and we'll take a look

AAAAGGGGG, I can't believe I never saw that! It had this:stuck in there. So, I changed it to and it works ... Thanks for telling me where that log file was, I would have never found it, because I had peered over /var/log/messages for anything, and no dice.

Now that I've got THAT problem solved, is there any way to remove apache without finding every single file that belongs to it and deleting it? Is there a make undelete or a make uninstall? Or, is that something that the programmer decides to put in? See, when I installed it, I misread the README.configure file and stuck it into /usr/local, so, it's clogging that up. It should be in its own sub-directory.
And one more question. I've seen this done I don't know how many countless times. Can users put web pages in their home directories and have apache acces it? As in, I've got a user Babbage, and he wants a webpage, so I would do http://infamoustim/~Babbage and it would work?
Thanks again for all of your help!

1) I'm not sure if theres an undelete or anything but you could just rm -rf /usr/local/apache then configure a new one into a new dir, and any files (if there even are any) that were installed anywhere besides /usr/local/apache will just get written over because apache isn't set up to change the directory where any other files get moved.

You know I really wouldn't doubt though that RH comes with something that would automatically uninstall.

2) I've never done it before but i believe all you have to do for the user thing is, add the module mod_userdir.c and then make sure the UserDir is right in your httpd.conf and that should be it. Just add index.html to /home/Babbage/public_html and then test it out by going to http://infamoustim/~Babbage/index.html

In your httpd.conf, you'll need to uncomment everything relevant to allowing access to /home/*/public_html.

Luckily, you'll find it right under the
<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
entry... it's pretty restrictive as is, modify as you see fit.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you need to chmod 711 /home/users, and make sure that the users chmod 755 ~/public_html and chmod 644 ~/public_html/*

this might be stuff you already know, but this tripped me up a while back, and I just want to pass it along to you.

hth
leo

No, no, I was just discovering this last night, as I messed with individual user accounts and the mod_user module. Thanks for the tip, I wasn't sure how it should go. I forget how the permissions apply to directories. I mean it's obvious for files, but does anyone know about directories off the top of his head? I can never remember

directories are the same as with files, ReadWriteExecute, the only difference is that, in order to get into the directory you need the execute(X) permission.