Apache: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

2.4. Setting Up a Unix Server

We can point httpd at our site with the -d flag (notice the full pathname to the site.toddle directory):

% httpd -d /usr/www/site.toddle
         

Since you will be typing this a lot, it's sensible to copy it into a script called go in /usr/local/bin by typing:

% cat > /usr/local/bin/go
            httpd -d `pwd`
            ^d
         

^d is shorthand for CTRL-D, which ends the input and gets your prompt back. This go will work on every site.

Make go runnable and run it by typing the following (note that you have to be in the directory .../site.toddle when you run go):

% chmod +x /usr/local/bin/go
% go
         

This launches Apache in the background. Check that it's running by typing something like this (arguments to ps vary from Unix to Unix):

% ps -aux
         

This Unix utility lists all the processes running, among which you should find several httpds.^[*]

^[*] On System V-based Unix systems (as opposed to Berkeley-based), the command ps -ef should have a similar effect.

Sooner or later, you have finished testing and want to stop Apache. In order to do this, you have to get the process identity (PID) using ps -aux and execute the Unix utility kill:

% kill 
            PID
         

Alternatively, since Apache writes its PID in the file ... /logs/httpd.pid (by default—see the PidFile directive), you can write yourself a little script, as follows:

kill `cat /usr/www/site.toddle/logs/httpd.pid`

You may prefer to put more generalized versions of these scripts somewhere on your path. For example, the following scripts ...