On Sat, Aug 05, 2006 at 04:06:16PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
I can't seem to find an answer in any of the normal places, so...
Short of making from scratch, is there a way to get apt-get to install a
copy of apache in an alternate directory, so I can run several demons in
parallel?
I often run Apache by setting up a /home/foo/apache2 and
/home/foo/public_html, where public_html contains the content and
apache2 contains the following directories: bin, conf, init.d, lock,
log, run. The bin directory contains a copy of apache2ctl modified to
start/stop apache using the different directory layout. The conf
directory is essentially a copy of /etc/apache2 customized for that
particular apache instance. The init.d directory contians a copy of the
/etc/init.d/apache2 script which has been modified for the new directory
layout. The log, run and lock directories contain the various files
created at runtime by apache. What I then do is create a cron job
@reboot that will start that user's apache instance. In order that
everything might work smoothly so that users don't need to use some high
numbered port, I set the individual apache instance to use a high number
port and then use ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse in the main apache
instance. This allows me to something like have one user with mod_php
enabled (notriously insecure, but performs well) and another with
mod_perl and another with mod_python. The advantage to this approach is
that with everything in a separate memory space, the chance that someone
rogue user will get to another user's content is minimzed to a degree.
The disadvantage to this approach is that with everything in a seperate
memory space, you use more memory.
Regards,
-Roberto