Getting Started with Apache 1.3 Page 2

These locations will be used by all of the cd and other shell
commands in this article.

Some formatting conventions used in examples in this article:

• ‘normal text‘ represents output from the computer.
• bold text indicates what you need to
  type. Unbolded text shows output from the computer.
• bold italicised text represents
  something you need
  to replace with your own value; for example, when following the steps
  in an example, when I came to
  “cd /home/username“,
  I would type “/home/coar” instead.
• normal italicised text in brackets ('[' and ']')
  is used to represent commentary,
  such as “[lots of output here]“.
• In order to make long lines in this article fit within the
  width of your window, they may be arbitrarily wrapped. This is
  signified by one line ending with a slosh (”) and the next
  line beginning with an open broket (‘>’). For example:

      
      % this is the first part of the line     > and this is the second
      
      You can run these split-up pieces together into the single line
  
      they represent, or, on Unix, you can actually type the '' and
  
      hit Enter and type in the next portion when the system prompts
  
      you with the '>'.  (This convention was chosen because it
  
      matches this Unix behaviour, and most Apache servers are run
  
      on Unix.)
      
  

Platforms

The Apache Web server runs on almost every Unix-like system in the
world, and quite a few systems that don’t resemble Unix at all. It’s
supported on the server platforms of Microsoft Windows (such as
Windows NT and Windows 2000), and runs–but isn’t supported–on
the Windows 95 and Windows 98 platforms.

This breadth of support means that, whatever you’re running, you can
probably use Apache on it. If you want to use Apache on something
that isn’t clearly Windows nor Unix, or you are otherwise unsure,
check the resources in the
‘Going Further‘ section of this article
for places to inquire on how to proceed.

Prebuilt Packages–or Building Your Own

Since Apache is developed as an Open Source’ project, you have a choice
of either using a package that someone else prepared for your platform–if anyone has–or of downloading the source and building it yourself
from the ground
up. Of course, with the dozens of available platforms, there are sure to be
some to which the Apache developers themselves don’t have access, and
so your options may actually be reduced to building the Apache Web server
from scratch yourself.

Since different redistributors and repackagers have their own ideas about
where to put files, the locations identified in the
assumptions section may not be valid if you
installed Apache from such a package. If that’s the case, you’ll just need
to make the appropriate translations between the locations in this article
and those on your system.

Downloading the Software