Compile Source of Apache/MySQL/PHP on a Linux VPS

Compile Source of Apache/MySQL/PHP on a Linux VPS

Linux IT Engineers often use the Debina APT, or RedHat YUM repositories for an quick and easy install of the services on their servers. But , in some cases we often need to test the latest packages. For example the latest version of MySQL is 5.7 and we cannot get it via the apt, we have to manually download and install in on our Virtual Private Server. Then we can configure it to our production enviroment.

I have configured the VPS server with the 12.04 LTS versions. I prefer the LTS version because of the support for the security and long term update. 

First we start with creating the sources folder and downloading the Apache packages that are needed for our web server:

sudo mkdir /usr/src/sources

wget http://httpd.apache.org/dev/dist/httpd-2.4.2.tar.gz

tar xvfz httpd-2.4.2.tar.gz

After downloading the httpd packages and extracting them we can move on further in our process. We now need the APR utilities and the APR package itself. The APR stands for Apache Portable Runtime.

wget http://apache.spinellicreations.com//apr/apr-1.4.8.tar.gz

tar -xzf apr-1.4.8.tar.gz

rm apr-1.4.8.tar.gz

cd apr-1.4.8/

sudo apt-get install make

sudo ./configure

sudo make

sudo make install

Then we need the APR Utils to be configured.

wget http://mirrors.axint.net/apache//apr/apr-util-1.4.1.tar.gz

tar -xvzf apr-util-1.4.1.tar.gz

cd apr-util-1.4.1

./configure --with-apr=/usr/local/apr

make

make install

cd ..

Now we can return to the HTTPD folder to compile and install the Apache:

cd /usr/local/sources/httpd-2.4.2

./configure --enable-file-cache --enable-cache --enable-disk-cache --enable-mem-cache --enable-deflate --enable-expires --enable-headers --enable-usertrack --enable-ssl --enable-cgi --enable-vhost-alias --enable-rewrite --enable-so --with-apr=/usr/local/apr/

make

make install

cd ..

To startup the Web server we will create a soft link to a startup script and copy the startup script to the init.d folder for startup options.

ln -s /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl /usr/bin/apachectl

cp /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl /etc/init.d

update-rc.d apachectl defaults

Now we can reboot the server and check if it is running. And we can see that the daemon is running.

root@ubsrv1:~# ps aux | grep httpd

root      1063  0.0  0.2     0:00 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start

daemon    1065  0.0  0.2     0:00 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start

daemon    1066  0.0  0.2 3   0:00 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start

Next what we should do is to continue with the PHP support and installation.

cd /usr/src/sources

wget http://us2.php.net/get/php-5.5.5.tar.gz/from/ar2.php.net/mirror

tar xfvz php-5.5.5.tar.gz

cd  php-5.5.5

./configure --prefix=/var/www/ --with-apxs2=/var/apache2/bin/apxs --with-config-file- path=/var/www/php --with-mysql

make 

make install

The --prefix folder depends on the folder where you installed the apache, you can change this to your needs. And the final step is to install the MySQL server.

groupadd mysql

useradd -r -g mysql mysql

cd /usr/src/sources

wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.6/mysql-5.6.14.tar.gz/from/http://cdn.mysql.com/

tar zxvf mysql-5.6.14.tar.gz

ln -s /usr/src/sources/mysql-5.6.14 /usr/local/mysql

cd /usr/local/mysql

chown -R mysql .

chgrp -R mysql .

scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql

chown -R root .

chown -R mysql data

Here we have a simply longer procedure. First we create  a user and group. Then download the source files, extract them, create a soft link and run the mysql_install_db script. Add the permissions to the folders and that is all.

Now we can restart the server and everything should work fine. If not check out some cool tutorials on Ubuntu community.

Source http://community.ubuntu.com/