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Open Source Technologies

Notes 3.2.8 Restarting Apache

Whenever you make changes to the server configuration files, such as httpd.conf, they won’t
take effect until the server is restarted. In Linux, Apache can be restarted depending on how
you installed it. If you installed Apache using a binary or from scratch, as root, type:

/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl start
If you used an RPM, as root, type:

/sbin/service httpd start
After being restarted the changes will have taken effect.

Every standard Apache mod needs an initial ‘module’ to describe it.

he Apache project began in 1995 when a group of eight volunteers, seeing that
web software was becoming increasingly commercialized, got together to create a
Tsupported open source web server. Apache began as an enhanced version of the
public-domain NCSA server but steadily diverged from the original. Many new features
have been added to Apache over the years: significant features include the ability for a single
server to host multiple virtual web sites, a smorgasbord of authentication schemes, and the
ability for the server to act as a caching proxy. In some cases, Apache is way ahead of the
commercial vendors in the features wars. For example, at the time this book was written
only the Apache web server had implemented the HTTP/1.1 Digest Authentication scheme.
Internally, the server has been completely redesigned to use a modular and extensible
architecture, turning it into what the authors describe as a “web server toolkit.” In fact, there’s
very little of the original NCSA httpd source code left within Apache. The main NCSA legacy
is the configuration files, which remain backward-compatible with NCSA httpd.

Apache’s success has been phenomenal. In less than three years, Apache has risen from relative
obscurity to the position of market leader. Netcraft, a British market research company that
monitors the growth and usage of the web, estimates that Apache servers now run on over
50 per cent of the Internet web sites, making it by far the most popular web server in the
world. Microsoft, its nearest rival, holds a mere 22 per cent of the market. This is despite
the fact that Apache has lacked some of the conveniences that common wisdom holds to be
essential, such as a graphical user interface for configuration and administration.
Apache has been used as the code base for several commercial server products. The most
successful of these, C2Net’s Stronghold, adds support for secure communications with Secure
Socket Layer (SSL) and a form-based configuration manager. There is also WebTen by Tenon
Intersystems, a Macintosh PowerPC port, and the Red Hat Secure Server, an inexpensive
SSL-supporting server from the makers of Red Hat Linux.

Another milestone was reached in November of 1997 when the Apache Group announced its
port of Apache to the Windows NT and 95 operating systems (Win32). A fully multithreaded

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