Re: [cobalt-users] Upgrading Apache on RaQ3

["Dylan Smith" <dyls@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,

> I found the .tar of Apache 1.3.20 at www.apache.org.
>
> QUESTION #1:
> Can someone give me a PLAY BY PLAY on how to install
> this, restart, etc?

Read the instructions in the Apache tarball very carefully - that's the best
'play by play' you're gonna get I'm afraid!

However, this might come in useful:
* Back up your existing httpd. Do "locate httpd" to find it - on the RaQ2
it's /usr/sbin/httpd. Backing it up is as simple as doing:
# cp httpd httpd.bak

* Find out what modules that Cobalt put in their httpd (this is the Apache
webserver executable) because you will want all of these modules in your new
Apache server. To do this, type:

http -l

Follow the instructions that come with Apache on how to configure these.
Then follow the build instructions. Finally do a "make install".

This is what I did on my RaQ2 in addition:

Make install will put the new apache in /usr/local/apache. The easiest way
of Cobaltizing it is to use symbolic links. So make a symbolic link from
/usr/sbin/httpd to /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd - you'll have to stop and
delete the old httpd (of which you DID make a backup, didn't you?)

This is the command:
# ln -s /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd /usr/sbin/httpd

Do the same thing with the conf directory. On my RaQ2, I made a new symbolic
link from /usr/local/apache/conf to /etc/httpd/conf:
# ln -s /etc/httpd/conf /usr/local/apache/conf

Then restart Apache:
/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl start

> QUESTION #2:
> Is this server SUICIDE to upgrade Apache from 1.3.6 to
> 1.3.20?  I noticed there are no official "Cobalt"
> patches to upgrade their version of Apache.

No, it is not server suicide. Don't be frightened of upgrading software
yourself on your Cobalt server. Keep a backup of all your data in case you
hose something up and have to restore (which really is the worst that can
happen). I have long ago given up looking for upgrades for my RaQ2 from
Cobalt (and although I'm quite happy to build stuff myself, it's just much
quicker to use a prebuilt RPM, so it's a bit of a shame really).
Unless you're happy with the default Cobalt installation, it's pure fiction
that a Cobalt server is an "appliance" as they'd have you believe - take the
time to learn how to administer a Linux (unix) system, in the long run it
will pay off. I was fortunate enough to have started with Linux when the
kernel version was 0.11, so I've never been intimidated by the dire warnings
from Cobalt about changing system software ;-)

I have been running my own build of Apache on my RaQ2 (which includes PHP4
and mod_perl) for some months now, and it's been running fine. It won't help
you with cgi-bin slowness though: Perl cgi, at least on the RaQ2, is
diabolically slow and that's just the way it is (Perl outside of CGI is very
slow, see my earlier message where I compared Perl on the RaQ2 against Perl
on a Pentium II-266 running Linux: the Pentium was 6 times faster)