I am evaluating porting solaris (apache, mysql, ssl) servers to Linux. I set up a Centos server to test out apache programs to see how they work out of the box. Now I want to recompile Apache to incorporate the options we used when compiling under Solaris.
I see posts that say never, never compile from source but if I have options that were not compiled in, how can I do that? Also, many of the modules are dynamically loaded which is supposed to result in slower response from httpd. How can I see that my compile time options correspond to the compiled binary that centos provides? Also, some modules I try to install are asking where apxs is, but since I didn't compile it, I don't know.
I don't see why you shouldn't compile from source. In fact, with GenToo, that's pretty much all one can do. With CentOS, they've simply provided binaries that are part of RedHat Enterprise Linux source RPMs. You can always download the source RPMs and do an "rpmbuild", but with adding your own CFLAGS, etc.
But if you want to go purely source, I don't see a problem with it. It would be the easier way of customizing the config file the way you like it. You can copy the config.status file from Solaris and then on linux, do a "./configure -r" I think.
The axps thing is tricky -- you have to compile Apache and THEN install it and THEN compile the modules and support programs (like PHP, MySQL, etc). To see what came with Apache as a binary, run "httpd -l", and "httpd -V".