Revision as of 15:38, 8 October 2018

Installing Apache HTTPD from source

More recently CVEs have been discovered in the latest versions of httpd available from the repos, which presents a problem for administrators since they cannot easily upgrade to a patched version. For such cases, sometimes manually compiling httpd from source is the only temporary solution until the repositories are updated or backported.

Remove if already installed

If you already have httpd installed, remove it.

~$ sudo yum remove httpd -y

Install dependencies, download and unpack source

Install the epel repo, then grab some needed packages.

~$ sudo yum install epel-release -y
~$ sudo yum install autoconf expat-devel libtool libnghttp2-devel pcre-devel -y

Next we need to download apache httpd and (2) of apache's runtime libraries.

~$ curl -L https://github.com/apache/httpd/archive/2.4.35.tar.gz -o /tmp/apache/2.4.35.tar.gz --create-dirs
~$ curl -L https://github.com/apache/apr/archive/1.6.5.tar.gz -o /tmp/apache/1.6.5.tar.gz --create-dirs
~$ curl -L https://github.com/apache/apr-util/archive/1.6.1.tar.gz -o /tmp/apache/1.6.1.tar.gz --create-dirs

untar them

~$ tar -zxvf 2.4.35.tar.gz -C /tmp/apache/
~$ tar -zxvf 1.6.5.tar.gz -C /tmp/apache/
~$ tar -zxvf 1.6.1.tar.gz -C /tmp/apache/

Move APR libraries into place. Make sure the new directory names do not have a version number.

~$ cp -r /tmp/apache/apr-1.6.5 /tmp/apache/httpd-2.4.35/srclib/apr
~$ cp -r /tmp/apache/apr-util-1.6.1 /tmp/apache/httpd-2.4.35/srclib/apr-util

Compile time

It's easiest just to be within the directory.

~$ cd /tmp/apache/httpd-2.4.35

Now lets build the conf and then compile including SSL support (mod-ssl)

~$ ./buildconf
~$ ./configure --enable-ssl --enable-so --enable-http2 --with-mpm=event --with-included-apr --with-ssl=/usr/local/openssl --prefix=/usr/local/apache2
~$ make
~$ sudo make install

Add to /usr/bin

So that we can execute httpd, we need to add a symlink to /usr/bin:

~$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd /usr/bin/httpd

Verify version

~$ httpd -v
Server version: Apache/2.4.35 (Unix)
Server built:   Oct  8 2018 15:11:53

Add init.d script

Pulled from this github source.

~$ sudo vim /etc/init.d/httpd
#!/bin/bash
#
# Startup script for the Apache Web Server
#
# chkconfig: - 85 15
# description: Apache is a World Wide Web server.  It is used to serve \
#              HTML files and CGI.
# processname: httpd
# pidfile: /usr/local/apache2/logs/httpd.pid
# config: /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/httpd ]; then
        . /etc/sysconfig/httpd
fi

# This will prevent initlog from swallowing up a pass-phrase prompt if
# mod_ssl needs a pass-phrase from the user.
INITLOG_ARGS=""

# Path to the apachectl script, server binary, and short-form for messages.
apachectl=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl
httpd=/usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd
pid=$httpd/logs/httpd.pid
prog=httpd
RETVAL=0


# The semantics of these two functions differ from the way apachectl does
# things -- attempting to start while running is a failure, and shutdown
# when not running is also a failure.  So we just do it the way init scripts
# are expected to behave here.
start() {
        echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
        daemon $httpd $OPTIONS
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/httpd
        return $RETVAL
}
stop() {
        echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
        killproc $httpd
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/httpd $pid
}
reload() {
        echo -n $"Reloading $prog: "
        killproc $httpd -HUP
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
}

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
  start)
        start
        ;;
  stop)
        stop
        ;;
  status)
        status $httpd
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
  restart)
        stop
        start
        ;;
  condrestart)
        if [ -f $pid ] ; then
                stop
                start
        fi
        ;;
  reload)
        reload
        ;;
  graceful|help|configtest|fullstatus)
        $apachectl $@
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
  *)
        echo $"Usage: $prog {start|stop|restart|condrestart|reload|status"
    echo $"|fullstatus|graceful|help|configtest}"
        exit 1
esac

exit $RETVAL