Gentoo Linux: Apache

Running Apache on Gentoo gives you a lot of flexibility. However, out of the box, there are a lot of modules that are not used in many client configurations.


The modules that Apache is built with can be set by APACHE2_MODULES in /etc/make.conf.

Here is a trimmed down version that removes many unused modules.

APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_default auth_digest authn_file authz_default
authz_host authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid deflate dir disk_cache env expires file_cache
filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite
setenvif status unique_id userdir vhost_alias"


Gentoo lets you configure the MPM in use. The most common ones are prefork and worker, with prefork being the default. You can change this in make.conf.



You can build Apache, or any program, with different settings than used by make.conf. Apache is a good candidate, since it is a primary application in the LAMP stack.

An optimized version using gcc with highest optimizations:

mkdir -p /etc/portage/env/www-servers

Edit apache file in that directory and add this:

CFLAGS="-O3 -pipe -march=native"