Fwd: Compiling HTTPD from Source (Apache Users)

Personally, I just compile the entire suite from source code, including the compiler (GCC) itself, openSSL, anything related to what my web server might need.
All dependencies and the correct versions of the different software packages are stored in a rather bulky (but simple) Makefile. Once you have that sorted out (and I did), rebuilding (= recompiling, not re-investigating the building) is only necessary on another O/S or hardware architecture.

----- Forwarded message from Jeff Trawick <trawick@xxxxxxxxx> -----
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:28:13 -0400
From: Jeff Trawick <trawick@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [users@httpd] Compiling HTTPD from Source
To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 11:10 AM, Lesley Kimmel <ljkimmel99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks for your previous input.

I compiled HTTPD on RHEL5 and attempted to use on RHEL6 given the lowest glibc and kernel version restrictions. However, I got an error on RHEL6 because libexpat was not found. It turns out that RHEL5 has libexpat by default and RHEL6 does not. I think it supports python and yum. In any case I was able to successfully build HTTPD on RHEL5 to run on RHEL6 by using an 'undocumented' compile flag '--with-expat=builtin'.

If it were me I'd use the system expat. Your Linux vendor would be expected to fix any security issues within a short timeframe. APR-Util probably wouldn't have a new release so quickly for this library which it bundles.

This brings up the question of what other issues one might run into when compiling on one system to be used on another. Is there not a very generic compile procedure or is it simply the best practice to compile each package on the target system? I'm trying to avoid maintaining several different build servers if possible.

I'd be very concerned about OpenSSL. My experience is with scenarios where the security library is part of the custom httpd package.

There are always issues of identifying required packages for deployment when you run on different distros/versions, and disabling features in rare cases when the build would find it on the build system but you don't want to require its installation on the target machine.

Thanks again,
-Les

Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 09:32:35 -0400
From: trawick@xxxxxxxxx
To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Compiling HTTPD from Source

On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 9:16 AM, Lesley Kimmel <ljkimmel99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
All;

I've had good success compiling HTTPD from source when compiling on RHEL5 and running on RHEL5 or compiling on RHEL6 and running on RHEL6. I see there are library compatibility issues when compiling on RHEL6, for example, and trying to run on RHEL5. How can I compile in a more generic way to to be distro independent?

Generally: compile on the lowest glibc and kernel versions on which you plan to run

There's a recent discussion thread on dev@apr about working around this, but it is an iterative process and might not work from release to release. Here's that thread:

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/apr-dev/201410.mbox/%3C20141022131350.GA2848%40unixarea.DDR.dd%3E

Thanks in advance,

-Les

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