I needed to do an upgrade to the Apache server that runs on my home computer.

I run it so I can access files on my home machine from the office, since sometimes I forget to upload my interesting finds. I happen to have a router that supports dynamic DNS, so my changing IP is not a problem. The router forwards incoming port 80 to my box. It works smooth and doesn’t affect the other machines on the network.

Contrary to what you might think, Apache takes up very little overhead. Since it’s not serving up zillions of publicly accessible webpages, it takes up a few megs at most (well, actually about 14MB). I never turn it off — don’t have to.

The machine is a Windows XP box, so the Apache server running on it is the Win32 version, the only Win32 version I’ve ever installed, actually. Any other install of Apache I’ve ever done was on Linux. I keep meaning to set up a Linux-based server on my home network for this very purpose, but I just never seem to get around to it.

On Linux you simply rpm -ivh on the the updated Apache .rpm to put in a fix (or run yum or apt-get, even easier). The Linux upgrade is fairly easy.

But the Win32 upgrade is more of a nail-biter. The installer program insists that you un-install the old version first. This sends a chill up my spine, because this kind of thing always seems to end badly in the Windows world. I backed up the “conf” directory. I hoped I could put it back when the upgrade was complete.

But in the end my fears were unfounded. The uninstall left the various configs alone and the installer for the newer version reclaimed them. The way it should work. In three minutes I had upgraded my Apache, no problems at all.