Upgrade to apache 2.2.6 without downtime

2007-09-21

I will show you how to upgrade your apache to the latest version without downtime, and also some tips to get out the best performance from your apache.

First, rename your apache folder to something like "apachebak". This allows you to compile the new apache in the same directory as the old apache, and you can have a backup of your old apache, if something goes wrong.

#change to apache parent directory
cd /home/web/
mv apache apachebak

Next thing is to get the sources. If you don't have them

#change to your sources directory
cd /home/sources/
wget http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/httpd-2.2.6.tar.gz

Now extract the sources

gunzip < httpd-2.2.6.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Before I start compiling, I use some gcc flags to speed up apache. You can read how to compile with optimization, to optimize the code for your machine

#this enables compilation with my both cores
#i have a dual core machine and i must use -j3, 
#if you have a quad core machine for example you must use -j5
export MAKEOPTS=-j3 
#these are CFLAGS for my machine, core 2 duo
export CFLAGS="-O3 -march=nocona -freorder-blocks /
-fno-reorder-functions -mmmx -mno-mmx -msse -msse2 /
-mno-sse2 -msse3 -mno-sse3 -mssse3 -mno-ssse3 -mfpmath=sse"
export CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=nocona -freorder-blocks /
-fno-reorder-functions -mmmx -mno-mmx -msse -msse2 /
-mno-sse2 -msse3 -mno-sse3 -mssse3 -mno-ssse3 -mfpmath=sse"

If you want to compile your code on 64 bit linux, apache has a bug that fails compilation. Here is how to fix the apache bug

And now we can start the compilation

./configure --prefix=/home/web/apache --enable-so --enable-rewrite --disable-cgi --disable-cgid --disable-autoindex --with-mpm=worker --enable-nonportable-atomics=yes  --enable-lib64 --libdir=/usr/lib64 && make && sudo make install

Note: If you have a 32 bit machine then remove "--enable-lib64 --libdir=/usr/lib64" from the configure line

--prefix=/home/web/apache this is the apache directory where to install. In my case is my old apache directory
--enable-so. This enables you to add dynamic modules later, like php or perl
--disable-cgi --disable-cgid --disable-autoindex I disable cgi and autoindex because I don't use them. I use only php, and I use mod_rewrite to map my url's so autoindex is obsolete for me
--with-mpm=worker enables "MPM worker" Multi-Processing Module implementing a hybrid multi-threaded multi-process web server, there is also " MPM prefork" Implements a non-threaded, pre-forking web server. But I have a dual core machine so it's better in my case to use a multithreaded process, but some benchmarks show that this model is faster on single core machines also.
nonportable-atomics=yes this enables some performance improvement, info from apache optimization guide "By default, APR uses mutex-based atomics on Linux. If you configure with --enable-nonportable-atomics, however, APR generates code that uses a 486 opcode for fast hardware compare-and-swap. This will result in more efficient atomic operations, but the resulting executable will run only on 486 and later chips (and not on 386)."

Now, the compilation is complete. You can edit your httpd.conf install php module or other modules and you can stop the old apache and start the new apache

#this will kill the old apache process and will start the new apache process
kill `cat /home/web/bakapache/logs/httpd.pid` 
/home/web/apache/bin/apachectl -k start

Note:If you upgraded from apache 2.2.* you can just copy "conf" and "modules" from your old apache and they will run without problems, because modules are built with Apache 2.0 handler, and they are compatible

#this will copy configuration files and modules
rm -R /home/web/apache/conf
cp -R /home/web/bakapache/conf /home/web/apache/conf
#copy modules
rm -R /home/web/apache/modules
cp -R /home/web/bakapache/modules /home/web/apache/modules

Upgrade to apache 2.2.6 without downtime

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