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4

Because of Ubuntu updating, I made the mistake to upgrade Apache 2.2 to 2.4—many things went wrong.

I have no idea how to specify the version after apt-get remove apache2. apt-get install apache2 always installs 2.4.

How can I do it?

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up vote 18 down vote accepted

You need to do the following:

apt-cache showpkg <pachagename>

The above command will display list of available versions for this package. Then select the needed version and do the following.

apt-get install <packagename>=<complete version name>

Example:

apt-cache showpkg apache2
apt-get install apache2=2.2.14-5ubuntu8.7
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1  
The only version that shows for me is 2.4 on Ubuntu 16. This is a big problem because 2.4 has known issues that have completely broken my site. – felwithe Sep 11 '16 at 2:24
1  
Version 2.2.14-5ubuntu8.7 for apache2 was not found – Braian Mellor Jul 24 '17 at 13:52
up vote 4 down vote

See the ubuntu howto on package pinning:

Edit file /etc/apt/preferences

The 'preferences' file is where the actual pinning takes place. To pin a package, set its Pin-Priority to higher number. Here's an example:

Package: apache2
Pin: release n=raring
Pin-Priority: 1000

Test before running apt-get update or apt-get install with apt-cache policy apache2

See man apt_preferences for details. I chose pinning raring's release because this way you'll still get updates on the 2.2.x branch. Don't forget that you have to make the package available to APT by adding raring's repository URLs.

Update:

As raring is EOL, you could either use the still supported precise or the archived raring packages from http://old-releases.ubuntu.com.

Using this as /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raring.list will allow you to install older packages:

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
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Hi. This seems to be exactly what I want. Can you please also add commands for adding raring's repository URLs? I cannot seem to find the right ones. – Ravish Bhagdev Feb 27 '15 at 12:44
    
I've updated my answer. – fuero Mar 2 '15 at 13:04
    
Nice catch, I've corrected the APT mirrorlist to raring. Of course if you want to use the precise version, /etc/apt/preferences must be changed accordingly too. – fuero Mar 3 '15 at 21:25
    
Thanks a lot. Anyway turning out to be a can of worms... will have to take the VM route as getting following after performing specified steps (and also trying install -f option and clean) The following packages have unmet dependencies. apache2 : Depends: apache2-mpm-worker (= 2.2.22-1ubuntu1.7) but it is not going to be installed or apache2-mpm-prefork (= 2.2.22-1ubuntu1.7) but it is not going to be installed or .... etc etc – Ravish Bhagdev Mar 4 '15 at 1:02
up vote 3 down vote

How to install Apache 2.2 on an Ubuntu distro that does not have it in the repositories.

Requirements

You need to have the build-essentials package installed to do this.

~# sudo apt-get install build-essential

To give Apache the ability to compress output to browsers that support it, you need to install zlib. Download the current release from the zlip Hompage (zlib-1.2.11.tar.gz as of writing), extract it, navigate to the extracted folder, build, and install.

wget http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.11.tar.gz
tar -xvf zlib-1.2.11.tar.gz
cd zlib-1.2.11/
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install

Install Apache 2.2

Download the curent version from the Apache Download Page (httpd-2.2.32.tar.gz as of writing), extract it, navigate to the extracted folder, build, and install.

wget http://www-eu.apache.org/dist/httpd/httpd-2.2.32.tar.gz
tar -xvf httpd-2.2.32.tar.gz
cd httpd-2.2.32/
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2 --enable-mods-shared=all --enable-deflate --enable-proxy --enable-proxy-balancer --enable-proxy-http
make
sudo make install

Start Apache:

sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

Check, if everything is OK

Navigate to http://localhost in your browser, where you should see a message saying “It works!”.

Alterntively, you can do this via terminal:

wget -qO- http://localhost | grep "It works!"

Which should output something like this in the terminal:

<html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html>

Create "service" for Apache2

sudo cp /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl /etc/init.d/apache22
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/apache22

Hint: you can call apachectl with sudo service apache22 now.

Make Apache start at boot time

sudo sed -i '2i #\n### BEGIN INIT INFO\n# Provides:             apache2\n# Required-Start:       $remote_fs\n# Required-Stop:        $remote_fs\n# Default-Start:        2 3 4 5\n# Default-Stop:         0 1 6\n# Description:          apache2\n# Short-Description:    The Apache webserver\n### END INIT INFO' /etc/init.d/apache22
sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d apache22 defaults

Secure Apache

sudo service apache22 stop
sudo adduser --system apache
sed -i -e 's/User daemon/User apache/g' /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
sed -i -e 's/Group daemon/Group nogroup/g' /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
sudo service apache22 start

Check new settings

ps -aux | grep httpd

If the terminal output of the last command shows some lines starting with "apache" then everything is OK.

Configure your site(s)

If you want to configure your apache for just one site, simply edit the httpd.conf

nano /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

The essential parameters you may want to modify are:

ServerName www.example.com:80
DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs"

<Directory "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

If you want to configure more than one site, have a look at httpd-vhosts.conf

nano /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

You will have to add a < Directory > section withing the < VirtualHost > similar to the one above, but for the document root of the VitualHost. For example:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host.example.com
    DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache2/docs/dummy-host.example.com"
    ServerName dummy-host.example.com
    ServerAlias www.dummy-host.example.com
    ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host.example.com-error_log"
    CustomLog "logs/dummy-host.example.com-access_log" common
    <Directory "/usr/local/apache2/docs/dummy-host.example.com">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
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Following these instructions, I run into this: dzenan@ubuntu16-i386:~/httpd-2.2.34$ sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d apachectl defaults insserv: script apachectl: service apache2 already provided! insserv: exiting now! update-rc.d: error: insserv rejected the script header – Dženan Oct 30 '17 at 18:08
    
Indeed, on Ubuntu 16.04 there is already /etc/init.d/apache2 file with radically different content. – Dženan Oct 30 '17 at 18:14
    
Removing the offending file gets us over that step, but sudo service apachectl stop does not stop the service. – Dženan Oct 30 '17 at 18:29
    
"sudo service apachectl stop" would only not work, if you didn't follow the steps under Make Apache start at boot time. Having read though my answer, I decided to change it... first, apachectl is really a bad name for a "service" and it was bad to make creating it part of that section. So, instead you would now do sudo service apache22 start/stop, AFTER following the steps under Create "service" for Apache2. – Johano Fierra Nov 7 '17 at 15:07
    
I decided to abandon this approach and update my config file to be compatible with apache 2.4. Less headaches that way. But thanks for the detailed answer! – Dženan Nov 7 '17 at 15:20
up vote 1 down vote

You upgraded from Ubuntu 13.04 to 13.10? There is no way to get Apache 2.2 back without going outside the Ubuntu package repositories. It's better to just fix your Apache configuration so that it works with 2.4.

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not really, see my answer – Coen Damen Sep 16 '16 at 10:00
    
@CoenDamen actually you answer is "going outside the Ubuntu package repositories". Also, your answer won't work "as is" for any fresh Ubuntu installation, as it will be missing quite a few dependencies. – Johano Fierra May 31 '17 at 15:14
up vote 1 down vote

To install apache2.2 use the following process:

On a later distro (e.g. 16.04), I downloaded the 2.2.31 from the Apache site.

I built it using the following configuration:

./configure --enable-so --enable-ssl --with-included-apr --enable-mods-shared=all --enable-load-all-modules --enable-rewrite --enable-proxy --enable-proxy_connect --enable-proxy_http --enable-proxy_ajp --enable-authn_alias --with-npm=prefork --enable-proxy_balancer --enable-proxy_ftp --enable-cache --enable-suexec --enable-disk_cache  > conf.txt

Then of course tweaking the httpd.conf and ssl.conf files.

After that I just run the ./httpd -k start

And it works !

note that I added the apache2.4 via apt-get but never removed it. This means that after system start, I need to kill the apache2 process. And then I am able to start apache2.2. I had to install apache2.4 to use apachectl but later disbanded that because I use ./httpd

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Have a look at my answer regarding using apachectl for Apache 2.2, you may have to remove the 2.4 version first though (/usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f apachectl remove). – Johano Fierra May 31 '17 at 15:17

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