I've been using Apache 2.2 for a long time now. This morning I updated to Apache 2.4.3.

I have never installed a version of software that is not in the repository before on Debian. (I've custom compiled other distros, but not in Debian.) Is it normal to not be able address Apache as Apache2 in the terminal after installing a package from tar.bz2 file?

What I mean is that when I install a package from the repository simply using apt-get I can refer the the package by name. For example if I want to restart Apache I could do

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

or if I want to find out information about the installed package I could do

dpkg -s apache2

But after installing the newer version of Apache I can't do those things by using the name 'apache2'.

I can of course still stop and start Apache by using it's exact location, but I'm just curious if it is normal to not be able to call the package by name when installing using a version not found in the repository.

I am also looking for some good Apache 2.4.3 documentation that goes over the differences in 2.2 and 2.4. There are a lot of major changes in 2.4. I've looked through apache.org but I haven't found anything that goes over the differences.

A big change I noticed that the www directory is no longer is /var/www. It is in the hdocs directory under /etc/apache2/hdocs.

Did I simply mess up my install or is this in fact the new place to keep the web documents?

If anyone knows of some good documentation that can help me transition into this newer version of Apache I would very much appreciate it.

And yes, my Apache install works. I'm just wondering if I did some things wrong or there are just a lot of changes in the software.

Thanks.

You can (or at least you could in old apache) change the location of documents anytime editing config file in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

@kox444, yes, I could change it. I just want to be certain if there not being a www directory under var is just something new in Apache 2.4.3 not a mistake I made when installing.

Thanks.

Did you create a DEB package and installed that or did you just installed from source without creating a package?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Do you mean did I make and make install? (I do not know how to make a DEB package, unless that is what the make command does.)

I installed it like this

first I installed the apr and apr-util
cd to-my-apache2.4-directory-location
./configure --prefix=/etc/apache2
make
make install

OK, so you did not create a DEB package, that is the reason why you can't ask the package manager for information about the Apache package, simply because it can't know anything about a software that, from the package manager's view, simply doesn't exist.
Information how to build DEB packages can be found here: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ma.../index.en.html

Thanks. I had looked this up after your initial post.

http://wiki.debian.org/HowToPackageForDebian

Thanks alot.

Do you or anyone know if Apache 2.4.3 did away with /var/www as the default?

Just had a look at the httpd.conf for Apache 2.4.3 in Slackware, it looks like the default DocumentRoot option is /srv/httpd/htdocs.
Since Slackware aims to be close to upstream I doubt that this is a Slackware specific option, it seems to be a new default, although it may be possible that Debian patches this to be /var/www.

Thanks. That exaplins a lot.