EasyApache3 Apache1 to Apache2 Detailed Upgrade Guide

[orware]

I apologize for anybody coming to read this thread hoping that I'm the one that has written a detailed guide for upgrading from Apache1 to Apache 2 (or 2.2) but I have not.

I am starting this thread however so that one can be made so that some of the less Apache- oriented individuals (like myself) can have an easy to follow guide so that they can upgrade to the new Apache without any trouble.

Here's why I'm a bit afraid of upgrading:

Up til about two days ago I had two servers, one a dedicated quad-core server with 4GB RAM and plenty of hard drive space, the other was a VPS. When I upgraded from the VPS to the dedicated server I meant to cancel my VPS but I ended up having to keep it because one customer couldn't change the nameservers for their domain so it couldn't be pointed to the new server. Anyway, this allowed me to use the VPS to test a few things (like cPanel 11 and EasyApache). About two months ago I finally saw that EasyApache was stable enough to try out and so I performed an upgrade to Apache 2 on the VPS. Everything worked fine for a good month or so until about two or three weeks ago when Apache stopped working for me. Since it wasn't a huge issue for me (there really weren't any domains on it and I had that one domain forwarded to the new server because BIND was still working correctly) I didn't really worry about it and now I've gone ahead and canceled that account because we were finally able to update the nameservers for that one domain.

This leaves me with just the one dedicated server now and I don't want to move over to a new Apache without knowing fully whether it'll be as stable as the setup I have now.

Right now, I'm running the latest version of Apache 1, PHP5 as CGI, cURL support and a few other Apache and PHP modules enabled.

I'd like to be able to have a stable Apache 2.2 (or 2.0...I don't follow them to much so I don't know what the benefits/drawbacks of each choice would be), I'd still like to run PHP as CGI (I think there is a FastCGI plugin for this, but again I'm not too fully versed in the topics), and I'd like to take advantage of the caching systems available (of which eAccelerator is one). I know there are a few topics that talk about the FastCGI option and the caching options, but I don't believe that there are any guides that someone could follow that would allow someone to easily make the move to Apache2 using the new EasyApache3 (the plethora of options kind of freaks me out, because before there was a more limited set of options and now I don't know which ones work well with each other or which ones I should have checked or anything...I think that information would be the most important for this guide).

So, if any of you Apache and EasyApache gurus could lay down your knowledge in words I know it would not only help myself, but probably a whole lot of other individuals who are looking for the very same type of tutorial.

Thank you,

-Omar

[cpanelnick]

Have you read the documentation here yet?

http://www.cpanel.net/support/docs/ea/ea3/

[orware]

I'm taking a look at the documentation now, and even though I feel it should be easy enough (since I was able to get a working installation on the VPS...though for some reason it decided to break, perhaps after a cPanel update) I think a guide would still prove helpful for people that would like to have something they could follow (like just check these options here, leave those options there unchecked because most people don't need/use them, enable these ones over here for performance, etc.).

While the guide does help by providing the general overview and quite a few specifics (certainly something I'd be able to follow and then tinker with to create a running configuration) my main goal for creating this thread was so that a cookie cutter guide that would work for most people and give them good to above-average performance. I don't know if that's something somebody would be willing to do. I'd certainly try, but my Apache knowledge isn't the best and I wouldn't trust too much of my own advice :-).

Thanks for the link to the documentation!