Just wondering if anyone has upgraded Apache? I've installed before on a Windows machine, but have never installed/upgraded it in a control panel vps environment. Below is the response I got from support.
Yes it is possible. It is pretty tricky to do it however. While we do
not offer support for this a great place for you to go and look at is
forums.westhost.com Please let me know if there is anything else I can
help you with.
What all is involved?
Thanks....
Well, if you don't have pretty good Linux skills/experience, I'd say forget it! Unfortunately, from what I have found, installing programs on the VPS is a pain - it's nothing like the Windows installers that do it all for you so cleanly :(
Ok, so what if your Linux skills are adequate?
Does any one know how to upgrade the VPS to these versions?
Apache 1.3.28
mod_perl 1.28
Perl 5.6.1
These Perl minor revisions are precisely where Perl (and mod_perl) solved some naughty UTF-8 problems, which I don't really need, but LiveJournal does (every module I try to install squawks about "utf8" something or another).
I understand WestHost's reluctance to offer this as standard - I know some pretty high-fawlutin' installations that refuse to upgrade from 5.6.0 to 5.6.1. I would just like to do it for myself, locally.
BTW: My understanding is that the magic behind this is /usr/local/bin - you have permission to write to this (these) directories, and it comes before the standard installation's /usr/local/apache/bin directory in the PATH. A similar trick should work for /usr/local/perl. Of course, once you touch these, you're on your own! :shock:
I may try this out on a new, basic, account. I'd just like to know if anyone has some experience with this already (upgrading mod_perl is not simple).
TIA
There are actually some programs that cannot be upgraded in your VDS:
sendmail
apache
wu-ftpd
qpopper
Anything else is fair game. It is worth noting that with Apache you could technically setup a second installation and have it run on a non-standard port (ie. 8080) and have the default version of Apache use mod_proxy to forward specific requests to the other Apache server.
For what it is worth I've found that it has been easiest to make my own "root" folder. If you were to peek in my VDS you would see:
/home/myusername/root
/root -> /home/myusername/root (symlink)
Underneath 'root' are the usual folders you see in '/'. It allows me to completely (and clearly) seperate what I have installed with what is installed by default.
Scratch out 'apache'-- I got to thinking about why you would have issues for sendmail, wu-ftpd, and qpopper and realized that I could only think of complications for apache on name based accounts. If it is IP based then you've got no real restriction. With that said: http://jkfillmore.whsites.net:81 (or it might be up at http://jkfillmore.whsites.net:8080 or even not at all depending on the day) runs Apache2 without any problems. You won't want to put it up on port 80, however, due to things like Apache Watchdog and the fact that the VPS software might do harm to it treating it like a 1.3 installation. If you put it up on an alternative port then mod_rewrite and mod_proxy (watch our for leaving yourself open as an open proxy! it's easy to do) can be used to make Apache 1.3 and Apache 2 play nicely together.
So why the difference between being fine if your are IP based but issues if you are name based? If you are name based your IP address is shared and you've probably noticed (if you've looked at your error logs) that Apache automatically gets shut down when your site is quiet and automatically restarted when there is traffic again. This isn't an Apache features-- it is something the VPS does as an optimization. Also, because you are sharing your IP address it means something on the server level is figuring out how to get traffic sent to your account as opposed to someone else with that IP address on your server.