Using Apache With Microsoft Windows

This document explains how to install, configure and run Apache 1.3b6 (or later) under Microsoft Windows. Please note that at this time, Windows support is entirely experimental, and is recommended only for experienced users. The Apache Group does not guarantee that this software will work as documented, or even at all. If you find any bugs, or wish to contribute in other ways, please use our bug reporting page.

Warning: Apache on NT has not yet been optimized for performance. Apache still performs best, and is most reliable on Unix platforms. Over time we will improve NT performance. Folks doing comparative reviews of webserver performance are asked to compare against Apache on a Unix platform such as Solaris, FreeBSD, or Linux.

Most of this document assumes that you are installing Windows from a binary distribution. If you want to compile Apache yourself (possibly to help with development, or to track down bugs), see the section on Compiling Apache for Windows below.



Requirements

Apache 1.3b6 requires the following:

* Apache may run with Windows NT 3.5.1, but has not been tested.

If running on Windows 95, using the "Winsock2" upgrade is recommended but may not be necessary. If running on NT 4.0, installing Service Pack 2 is recommended.

Downloading Apache for Windows

Information on the latest version of Apache can be found on the Apache web server at http://www.apache.org/. This will list the current release, any more recent alpha or beta-test release, together with details of mirror web and anonymous ftp sites.

You should download the version of Apache for Windows with the .exe extension. This is a single file containing Apache, ready to install and run. There may also be a .zip file containing the source code, to compile Apache yourself.

Installing Apache for Windows

Run the Apache .exe file you downloaded above. This will ask for:

Important note for 1.3b6 installs: the installer for 1.3b6 will overwrite any existing httpd.conf, access.conf, srm.conf or mime.types files in the conf, and will also overwrite your index.html file in the htdocs directory. You should copy this files or directories before installing Apache 1.3b6, or install into a new directory.

After installing Apache, you should edit the configuration files in the conf directory as required. These files will be configured during the install ready for Apache to be run from the directory where it was installed, with the documents served from the subdirectory htdocs. There are lots of other options which should be set before you start really using Apache. However to get started the files should work as installed.

Running Apache for Windows

There are two ways you can run Apache: To start Apache as a service, you first need to install it as a service. Run the "Install Apache as Service" option from the Start menu. Once this is done you can start Apache by opening the Services window (in the Control Panel), selecting Apache, then clicking on Start. Apache will now be running in the background. You can later stop Apache by clicking on Stop. As an alternative to using the Services window, you can start and stop Apache from the control line with
  NET START APACHE
  NET STOP APACHE
To run Apache from a console window, select the "Apache Server" option from the Start menu. This will open a console window and start Apache running inside it. The window will remain active until you stop Apache. To stop Apache running, press Control-C within the console window.

After starting Apache running (either in a console window or as a service) if will be listening to port 80 (unless you changed the Port, Listen or BindAddress directives in the configuration files). To connect to the server and access the default page, launch a browser and enter this URL:

  http://localhost/
This should respond with a welcome page, and a link to the Apache manual. If nothing happens or you get an error, look in the error_log file in the logs directory.

Once your basic installation is working, you should configure it properly by editing the files in the conf directory.

Configuring Apache for Windows

Apache is configured by files in the conf directory. These are the same as files used to configure the Unix version, but there are a few different directives for Apache on Windows. See the Apache documentation for all the available directives.

The main differences in Apache for Windows are:

Running Apache for Windows from the Command Line

The Start menu icons and the NT Service manager can provide an simple interafce for administering Apache. But in some cases it is easier to work from the command line.

When working with Apache it is important to know how it will find the configuration files. During installation, a registry key will have been installed called:

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Apache Group\Apache\1.3 beta\ServerRoot
The value of this key is the "ServerRoot" directory, containing the conf directory. When Apache starts it will read the httpd.conf file from this directory. If this file contains a ServerRoot directive which is different from the directory obtained from the registry key above, Apache will forget the registry key and use the directory from the configuration file. If you copy the Apache directory or configuration files to a new location it is vital that you update the ServerRoot directory in the httpd.conf file to the new location.

To run Apache from the command line as a console application, use the following command:

    apache -s
(The -s option is not required by Windows 95, but on Windows NT it prevents Apache waiting to see if Apache is running as a service). Apache will execute, and will remain running until it is stopped by pressing control-C.

To install Apache as a Windows NT service, use the following:

    apache -i
and to remove the Apache service, use
    apache -u
If you want to run an installation of Apache in a directory other than the one in the registry key as above, use the -f command-line to specify the path to the httpd.conf file, or the -d option to specify the server root directory. These options can be used with any of the other flags as listed above. Again note that once Apache has read the httpd.conf file it will then start using the directory given on the ServerRoot directive line instead of the -f or -d command line argument.

Compiling Apache for Windows

Compiling Apache requires Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 to be properly installed. It is easiest to compile with the command-line tools (nmake, etc...). Consult the VC++ manual to determine how to install them.

First, unpack the Apache distribution into an appropriate directory. Open a command-line prompt, and change to the src subdirectory of the Apache distribution.

The master Apache makefile instructions are contained in the Makefile.nt file. To compile Apache, simply use one of the following commands:

These will both compile Apache. The latter will include debugging information in the resulting files, making it easier to find bugs and track down problems.

Apache can also be compiled using VC++'s Visual Studio development environment. Although compiling Apache in this manner is not as simple, it makes it possible to easily modify the Apache source, or to compile Apache if the command-line tools are not installed.

Project files (.DSP) are included for each of the portions of Apache. The three projects that are necessary for Apache to run are Apache.dsp, ap/ap.dsp, regex/regex.dsp, ApacheCore.dsp and os/win32/ApacheOS.dsp. The src/win32 subdirectory contains project files for the optional modules (see below).

Once Apache has been compiled, it needs to be installed in its server root directory. The default is the \Apache directory, on the current hard drive.

To install the files into the \Apache directory automatically, use one the following nmake commands (see above):

The dir argument to INSTDIR gives the installation directory. The can be omitted if Apache is to be installed into \Apache.

This will install the following:

If you do not have nmake, or wish to install in a different directory, be sure to use a similar naming scheme.