Apache Cookbook, 2nd Edition

1.9. Starting Apache at Boot

Problem

You want your Apache Web server to start automatically when your system boots up.

Solution

On a Windows system, if you installed Apache as a service, you can configure it to start automatically just as you would any other service. Go to the Services control panel and make the desired changes there.

On Unixish systems, how you set this up differs by platform. For Red Hat-based systems:

# cp path/to/apachectl /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd
# vi /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd   # add '# chkconfig 3 92 10'
# chkconfig --add httpd
#chkconfig --levels 35 httpd on

This will cause Apache to be started up (and shut down) as part of the normal sequence for runlevels 3 and 5.

Discussion

The solution provided is specific to Red Hat-based platforms such as Fedora Core or RHEL. For other platforms or distributions you may instead need to edit /etc/rc.local, or copy the apachectl script into /etc/rc3.d, or something similar. Consult your operating system’s documentation for specifics.

See Also

• Recipe 1.4

• Recipe 1.6