Recipe 1.1 Installing from Red Hat Linux's Packages

Problem

You have a Red Hat Linux server and want to install or upgrade the Apache web server on it using the packages that Red Hat prepares and maintains.

Solution

If you are a member of the Red Hat Network (RHN), Red Hat's subscription service, you can use Red Hat's up2date tool to maintain your Apache package:

# up2date -ui apache apache-devel apache-manual

If you're running a more recent version:

# up2date -ui httpd httpd-devel httpd-manual

If you aren't a member of RHN, you can still download the packages from one of Red Hat's servers (either ftp://ftp.redhat.com/ or ftp://updates.redhat.com/), and install it with the following command:

# rpm -Uvh apache

Discussion

The -Uvh option to the rpm command tells it to:

• Upgrade any existing version of the package already on the system or install it for the first time if it isn't.

• Explain the process, so you can receive positive feedback that the installation is proceeding smoothly.

• Display a pretty line of octothorpes (#) across the screen, marking the progress of the installation.

If you use the packages Red Hat maintains for its own platform, you will benefit from a simple and relatively standard installation. However, you can only update versions that Red Hat has put together an RPM package for, which typically means that you may be lagging weeks to months behind the latest stable version.

There is also the issue of platform compatibility; for instance, at some point the version of Apache provided for Red Hat Linux changed from 1.3 to 2.0, and newer versions of the operating system will probably only have the 2.0 packages available. Similarly, if you run an older version of Red Hat Linux, the newer packages will probably not install properly on your system.

It's a good idea to install the apache-devel package as well. It's quite small, so it won't have much impact on your disk usage; however, it includes files and features that a lot of third-party modules will need to install properly.

See Also

• Red Hat's full platform release archive at ftp://ftp.redhat.com/

• Red Hat's incremental update (errata) archive at ftp://updates.redhat.com/