Recently, after some software and hardware changes, I was forced to rebuild a CentOS 6.5-based virtual machine.  Because the CentOS repository does not include Apache HTTP Server 2.4, and I’m not a big fan of third-party repositories, I decided to compile httpd from source.  When compiling the HTTP server from source, the system administrator is not provided with any service management script; thus, I began my search.

I found a simple service script in an archived version of an old Red Hat user guide, which made things a little easier.

#!/bin/sh
#
# Startup script for the Apache Web Server
#
# chkconfig: 345 85 15
# description: Apache is a World Wide Web server.  It is used to serve 
#	       HTML files and CGI.
# processname: httpd
# pidfile: /var/run/httpd.pid
# config: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
start)
echo -n "Starting httpd: "
daemon httpd -DSSL
echo
touch /var/lock/subsys/httpd
;;
stop)
echo -n "Shutting down httpd: "
killproc httpd
echo
rm -f /var/lock/subsys/httpd
rm -f /var/run/httpd.pid
;;
status)
status httpd
;;
restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
;;
reload)
echo -n "Reloading httpd: "
killproc httpd -HUP
echo
;;
*)
echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|reload|status}"
exit 1
esac

exit 0

To create the service script file, follow these directions:

# Create httpd script
touch /etc/init.d/httpd

# Upload, or copy and paste the script contents
nano /etc/init.d/httpd

# Set desired permissions
chmod 0755 /etc/init.d/httpd

# Start httpd on boot, if desired
chkconfig --add httpd
chkconfig httpd on

Upon careful review, you’ll notice the service script assumes that the httpd binary is globally accessible.  Under my minimal CentOS installation, httpd was installed in /usr/local/apache2. While there are more than a few methods for accomplishing this goal, we’ll use a symbolic link.

# Create symbolic link to apachectl
ln -s /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl /usr/sbin/httpd

After that, I executed the script which caused a “bad interpreter” error.

[root@localhost]# /etc/init.d/httpd
-bash: ./httpd: /bin/sh^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

This error occurs when a file contains CRLF-style line endings (Windows) instead of the LF-style line endings required by Unix-based systems. Luckily, someone invented a utility that fixes this problem quickly and painlessly.

# Install dos2unix
yum install dos2unix

# Fix "bad interpreter" error
dos2unix /etc/init.d/httpd

After that, I could start, stop, and restart the httpd server without any problems. On the other hand, when I tried to retrieve the status directly from the httpd binary (apachectl), I encountered another problem. Luckily, this problem was also easily solvable.

httpd status
# Output: /usr/sbin/httpd: line 95: lynx: command not found

# Install Lynx browser
yum install lynx

And… that’s it!