Apache HTTP Installation Troubleshooting Guide

Installing Apache HTTP is always fun. A few days back, I was installing Apache 2.4 on CentOS VM and encountered multiple errors.

I thought it would be helpful to put together for a reference.

APR not found

[root@chandan httpd-2.4.25]# ./configure --enable-ssl
checking for chosen layout... Apache
checking for working mkdir -p... yes
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /usr/bin/grep
checking for egrep... /usr/bin/grep -E
checking build system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking host system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking target system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
configure: 
configure: Configuring Apache Portable Runtime library...
configure: 
checking for APR... no
configure: error: APR not found.  Please read the documentation.
[root@chandan httpd-2.4.25]#

APR stands for “Apache Portable Runtime” and needed to compile from the source. If you are in the same situation as me then following will rescue you.

First, you need to install APR.

Download the latest version of APR using wget

wget https://www-eu.apache.org/dist/apr/apr-1.6.3.tar.gz .

Extract the downloaded file

gunzip -c apr-1.6.3.tar.gz | tar xvf -

it will create a new folder “apr-1.6.3”
Go inside and compile with configure command

./configure

It will take a few seconds and once done you will get a prompt back (ensure no error).

The last step would be to install using make command

make
make install

Once done, I tried installing Apache and got another error.

APR-util not found

[root@chandan httpd-2.4.25]# ./configure --enable-ssl --enable-so
checking for chosen layout... Apache
checking for working mkdir -p... yes
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /usr/bin/grep
checking for egrep... /usr/bin/grep -E
checking build system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking host system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking target system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
configure: 
configure: Configuring Apache Portable Runtime library...
configure: 
checking for APR... yes
  setting CC to "gcc"
  setting CPP to "gcc -E"
  setting CFLAGS to " -g -O2 -pthread"
  setting CPPFLAGS to " -DLINUX -D_REENTRANT -D_GNU_SOURCE"
  setting LDFLAGS to " "
configure: 
configure: Configuring Apache Portable Runtime Utility library...
configure: 
checking for APR-util... no
configure: error: APR-util not found.  Please read the documentation.
[root@chandan httpd-2.4.25]#

In case you have “APR-util not found” error as well then you got to install the following.

Download the latest APR-util source

wget https://www-eu.apache.org/dist/apr/apr-util-1.6.1.tar.gz .

Extract the downloaded gz file

gunzip -c apr-util-1.6.1.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Go inside the newly created folder “apr-util-1.6.1” and install using the following commands

./configure --with-apr=/usr/local/apr/bin/apr-1-config
make
make install

Tried installing Apache again and got another error.

pcre-config for libpcre not found

This is what I got.

checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C99... -std=gnu99
checking for pcre-config... false
configure: error: pcre-config for libpcre not found. PCRE is required and available from http://pcre.org/

PCRE stands for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions, and this error got an easy solution. You just to install pcre-devel package.

yum install pcre-devel

Not over yet, got another in next attempt related to OpenSSL.

OpenSSL version is too old

checking whether to enable mod_slotmem_plain... no
checking whether to enable mod_ssl... checking dependencies
checking for OpenSSL... checking for user-provided OpenSSL base directory... ./configure: line 25426: cd: /usr/bin/openssl: Not a directory
/root/httpd-2.4.25
  adding "-I/root/httpd-2.4.25/include" to CPPFLAGS
  setting MOD_CFLAGS to "-I/root/httpd-2.4.25/include"
  setting ab_CFLAGS to "-I/root/httpd-2.4.25/include"
  adding "-L/root/httpd-2.4.25/lib" to LDFLAGS
  setting MOD_LDFLAGS to "-L/root/httpd-2.4.25/lib"
checking for OpenSSL version >= 0.9.8a... FAILED
configure: WARNING: OpenSSL version is too old
no
checking whether to enable mod_ssl... configure: error: mod_ssl has been requested but can not be built due to prerequisite failures
[root@chandan httpd-2.4.25]#

The first thing you have to ensure you have the latest version of OpenSSL which was in my case, so I needed to install the devel package, and it was all right.

yum install openssl-devel

xml/apr_xml.c:35:19: fatal error: expat.h: No such file or directory

While compiling APR, I got this error.

[root@instance-1 apr-util-1.6.1]# make
make[1]: Entering directory `/opt/temp/apr-util-1.6.1'
/bin/sh /usr/local/apr/build-1/libtool --silent --mode=compile gcc -g -O2 -pthread   -DHAVE_CONFIG_H  -DLINUX -D_REENTRANT -D_GNU_SOURCE   -I/opt/temp/apr-util-1.6.1/include -I/opt/temp/apr-util-1.6.1/include/private  -I/usr/local/apr/include/apr-1    -o xml/apr_xml.lo -c xml/apr_xml.c && touch xml/apr_xml.lo
xml/apr_xml.c:35:19: fatal error: expat.h: No such file or directory
 #include <expat.h>
                   ^
compilation terminated.
make[1]: *** [xml/apr_xml.lo] Error 1

If you are getting this error, then this can be resolved by installing expat-devel package.

yum install expat-devel

configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH

C compiler not found is typical for any software build, and you can fix this by installing the compiler.

yum install gcc

nghttp2 version is too old

This is specific to when you try to install Apache with HTTP/2. You will get the following error.

checking whether to enable mod_http2... checking dependencies
checking for OpenSSL... (cached) yes
  setting MOD_LDFLAGS to "  -lssl -lcrypto -lrt -lcrypt -lpthread"
  setting MOD_CFLAGS to " "
  setting MOD_CPPFLAGS to "-DH2_OPENSSL"
checking for nghttp2... checking for user-provided nghttp2 base directory... none
checking for pkg-config along ... checking for nghttp2 version >= 1.2.1... FAILED
configure: WARNING: nghttp2 version is too old
no
checking whether to enable mod_http2... configure: error: mod_http2 has been requested but can not be built due to prerequisite failures

And, if so, you can fix by installing nghttp2 as below.

Download the latest version of nghttp2 from here

wget https://github.com/nghttp2/nghttp2/releases/download/v1.37.0/nghttp2-1.37.0.tar.gz

Extract the downloaded file

tar -xvf nghttp2-1.37.0.tar.gz

It will create a new folder, go inside that and run the following

./configure
make
make install

Once done without error, run the Apache source build with HTTP2 again. It should be alright.

Finally, I was able to install Apache successfully. If you are interested in learning about Apache HTTP Server Administration, then check out this online course.

Chandan Kumar
Contributor
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Chandan Kumar is a founder of Geekflare. He is a technology enthusiast and entrepreneur who is passionate about helping businesses and individuals around the world.