Multiple versions of Apache installed and conflicting

Question

I started trying to create a website which uses PHP on an old computer (previously used by another programmer).

I wanted to test my PHP code without uploading it each time, so I downloaded Apache and installed it. I was starting to set Apache up when I discovered this computer already had Apache on it.

Now I had multiple versions of Apache, so I went into add/remove programs and got rid of Apache (which only showed up once in the list).

Unfortunately windows decided it would uninstall the old version and keep mine which was not functioning properly. Also for whatever reason it seemed to have kept a good few files from the old version, but not enough that I could actually use it in any way. I believe it just had some configurations files.

I thought I would copy my files from the new version into the old version and not replace anything so hopefully I would be able to run under the older configurations, but that didn't work.

At this point I just wanted to cut my losses, so I put all the versions of Apache in an archive so there was no way the computer could be using them. I also removed Apache from the windows startup and rebooted the computer after configuring one single version of the newer copy of Apache to supposedly run PHP.

The problem is upon startup I could immediately log in to localhost and apache was already running. Also when I opened Apache manually from the files I had left unzipped, it only gives me the option to start Apache (not an option to stop or restart implying it is not running) and when I click it, it says "The requested operation has failed!" which is less than helpful.

So anyway, I just want to be able to run PHP locally and now I don't feel like I can even successfully uninstall and start from scratch anymore. Does anyone know what I have to do to get this to work? Sorry for the long description, I wove such a tangled knot.

Answer 1

One way to solve is use a XAMP (Apache + MySQL + PHP) client like XAMPP http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html brings it all set up for you to use. The problem of conflict can be caused by any IDE (Netbeans for example) that already carries a version of Apache.

Try to configure config files of Apache case exist.

Answer 2

Assumption: Running Windows OS for development and linux for production environment.

My recommendation is to not mix the Windows and Linux worlds as while they can be made to behave after lots of work, it is usually more pain than good.

Instead, as a humble windows and linux user, download and install Virtualbox [https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads], a free open source virtualisation tool.

Then download a linux distribution of your choice and install that into a new virtual machine.

Configure the linux tools inside linux and leave your windows machine relatively untouched.

A useful linux service to install would be Samba - windows file sharing - you can use this to edit your code in windows using any IDE of your choice, while saving directly to linux and testing through linux. When happy, upload from the linux system (again like any other file uploader) and all will be well.

If you are deploying to a linux based environment in your production service then this will help you avoid common mistakes such as case-sensitivity trouble and many others.

Building and running this system is free and it will help teach you more about the linux environment you are deploying to also.

Equally, when you don't have the virtual machine booted, there's no services lying around exposing your computer to possible local network threats and consuming resources - as opposed to installing Apache on Windows where it will be using some resources all the time.