A Second Apache Instance With YUM

I ran into a situation where I needed two separate instances of the Apache HTTPD service on the same server. I couldn't simply virtual host the second site, because it needed a radically different configuration from the first instance. My first reaction was that I would use YUM to install the first instance, and then snag the Apache source and compile the second instance. The problem with this was that the two instances would be different versions: the first easily patched and upgraded with YUM and the second being an administrative nightmare of patching and recompiling.

To prevent the overhead of administering the second instance, I started investigating an old RPM option I'd never used: --relocate. It turns out this option was the opposite of what I had expected, in that it moved the first instance, rather than install a second. And besides, using RPM manually was only incrementally better than the original idea.

So what about YUM? There is an option for --installroot=/path. Seems like what I wanted: instead of distributing files based on system root to /etc, /usr, /var, lets put the httpd files in an tree under /opt. What happened when I ran the command surprised me:

yum install httpd --installroot=/opt
<snip>
Transaction Summary
=============================
Install 77 Package(s)
Update 0 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)

Total download size: 64 M
Is this ok [y/N]:

This thing is not going to only install the httpd binaries, libraries, and config files... but every dependency... which already exists on the system! And its going to require 64M of disk space!

Oh, wait... I've got like 250G of free space. Do I really care if it take 64M? No! And so, I answered "Y". What did we end up with?

ls /opt
bin dev home lib64 mnt proc sbin srv tmp var
boot etc lib media opt root selinux sys usr

Ouch! That's ugly. Looks like the better (cleaner, prettier) choice would have been:

yum install httpd --installroot=/opt/httpd-2i

For the sake of simplicity, through the miracle of virtualization, lets just consider that fixed.

Lets see what we got:

/usr/sbin/httpd -v
Server version: Apache/2.2.8 (Unix)
/opt/httpd2i/usr/sbin/httpd -v
Server version: Apache/2.2.8 (Unix)

What about an update? I added a repo file to include the updates directory on the satellite server.

yum update -y httpd
<snip>
/usr/sbin/httpd -v
Server version: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix)
/opt/httpd2i/usr/sbin/httpd -v
Server version: Apache/2.2.8 (Unix)

As expected for the base install, but no love from the second instance.

yum update -y httpd --installroot=/opt/httpd2i/
Setting up Update Process
No Packages marked for Update

Still no good. As a matter of fact, nothing seemed to work. So, as a workaround, I tried this:

yum install httpd -y --installroot=/opt/httpd2i-2/
rsync -Pr httpd2i-2/* httpd2i/ --update
/opt/httpd2i/usr/sbin/httpd -v
Server version: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix)
rm -rf /opt/httpd2i-2

In a nutshell, create a third instance, and copy the third instance over the second, hoping not to overwrite any configuration files in the process.

Does this solve the original problem? Sort of. Is it easier than recompiles? Its faster. Just one more problem... As is, the new Apache does not run. Looks like we need some more hacking. Stay tuned for part 2.

*** Update ***
On second though... I'll just recompile. It turns out there are some references to that path in the RedHat binaries. That's bad form on their part, and they should be ashamed, but by the time I figure out how to hack this, the recompile will be done.

So, no part two. Just snag the binaries and be done with it. That doesn't mean that this feature is useless. It just means that it didn't solve this problem.