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Chapter 6: Administering Apache
than 60 percent of all public web sites (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_
survey.html). Apache runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and all other Unix-like systems, as
well as the many incarnations of Microsoft Windows.
Like other Unix programs, Apache can be built with all of its modules combined into
one big program (static linking), or with modules that are loaded into memory as
needed (dynamic shared objects, or DSOs). The DSO method is easier and more flexi-
ble, since it allows you to add modules to Apache after you’ve built it. The Debian
installation for PHP and other Apache modules uses the DSO method.
Installation
In this section, we’ll install Apache, PHP, and MySQL. We’ll test each with its
default setup to ensure they’re all running correctly. In the following section, we’ll
dive into Apache configuration files and explore how to customize our setup.
Apache
You need to be the root user to install packages. First get the Apache server:
# apt-get install apache2
This should install Apache and start it. Did it work? To find out, enter your site’s
URL in a web browser. For the examples in this chapter, we’ll use the name of our
test server (http://server1.centralsoft.org). When you see this URL in the examples,
substitute the URL of your own server. If you’re running your browser on the same
machine as your web server and might have problems with DNS ...