Question

I’m trying to get an Apache server running on my Cygwin setup to follow the Java Ranch Cattle Drive tutorials online (basically, to learn Java EE web page development that uses a MySQL back end.)

I used the Cygwin Setup program to install httpd (which is how I installed most other dev tools I use on cygwin) and it says install complete, yet when I run ‘httpd’ it cannot find the command. It also appears the expected install directory (/usr/local/apache…) doesn’t exist.

Does anyone have any experience using this setup, and if so, you could walk me through the initial steps of getting the server up and running and getting a browser to display the server’s default page?

To keep answers focused, I didn’t want to discus the drawbacks of running Apache on a Windows system – this is just for learning purposes. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Looking at the Cygwin Package Listing for httpd, you can see that the executable is installed under /usr/sbin.

So, if /usr/sbin is not on your PATH (it isn’t on mine, not by default anyhow), you would actually run:

/usr/sbin/httpd

And btw, if you would like to list the files installed for a certain package, you can use cygcheck:

cygcheck -l httpd