How to install lighttpd from source code

Lighttpd is a secure, fast, compliant, and very flexible web server that has been optimized for high-performance environments. In this post, we will be installing Lighttpd by compiling the source code.

To install lighttpd from the source, first, let’s install the requirements

For RHEL, CentOS, AlmaLinux, etc..

dnf -y install wget
dnf -y group install 'Development Tools'

Use yum instead of dnf if you are using an older version, for example, CentOS 7

For Ubuntu/Debian

apt update
apt -y install build-essential wget

Next, we will download and install lighttpd, you can get the latest version download link from

https://www.lighttpd.net/

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://download.lighttpd.net/lighttpd/releases-1.4.x/lighttpd-1.4.64.tar.gz
tar -xvf lighttpd-1.4.64.tar.gz
cd lighttpd-1.4.64
make clean && make distclean
./configure --prefix=/usr --with-fam
make
make install

If you get error

configure: error: pcre2-config not found, install the pcre2-devel package or build with --without-pcre2

install pcre2 devel package

RHEL

dnf install -y pcre2-devel

For Ubuntu/Debian

apt install -y libpcre2-dev

If you get error related to zlib “configure: error: zlib headers not found, install them or build without –with-zlib”, install

For Ubuntu/Debian

apt install -y zlib1g-dev

Create User

Let’s create a user for running lighttpd

groupadd lighttpd
adduser -m -g lighttpd -d /var/www -s /sbin/nologin lighttpd

For Ubuntu/Debian

useradd -m  -d /var/www -s /sbin/nologin lighttpd

Instead of creating a new user, you can also use user nobody on RHEL based distros, www-data on Ubuntu.

Install configuration files

To setup default lighttpd.conf file, run

install -Dp ./doc/config/lighttpd.conf /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
cp -R doc/config/conf.d/ /etc/lighttpd/
cp doc/config/conf.d/mod.template /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf

Create a directory for log files

mkdir /var/log/lighttpd
chown -R lighttpd:lighttpd /var/log/lighttpd

Copy service files

cp doc/systemd/lighttpd.service /usr/lib/systemd/system/
cp doc/systemd/lighttpd.socket /usr/lib/systemd/system/

Update configuration files

Edit

vi /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf

Find

server.modules += ( "mod_Foo" )

Comment the line.

Edit /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Find

server.use-ipv6 = "enable"

Replace with

server.use-ipv6 = "disable"

Update server document root as needed

var.server_root = "/var/www"
server.document-root = server_root + "/html"

Starting lighttpd

Verify configuration file has now errors

/usr/sbin/lighttpd -tt -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Run lighttpd manually

/usr/sbin/lighttpd -D -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

You can enable/start lighttpd with

systemctl enable lighttpd
systemctl start lighttpd
systemctl status lighttpd

back to lighttpd