Lighttpd

As the title implies I've tried to installed lighttpd on a Raspberry Pi, but not successful.

Initial considerations:

1. Most wiki's and blog information online are misleading.
2. Building from source is not a simple task from the user perpective, which did not develop the code, and does not have well documented information about the source.
3. Dependencies should be well documented on in the tar ball, but usually is not.
4. There are many key options in the configure and make processes that should be better documented, at least for main Linux distributions and avoid rework (ie. reverse engineering) when you need to build from source.
5. Some times, upgrading to newer unstable, bleeding edge release, is not the answer, especially if you spent many days/months right tuning your install.

Why did I embark in this "work"

I needed a feature that is not available in deb package repository of the version of raspbian I am using, which is the proxy_mod - proxy.header("map-urlpath") feature.

sysinfo

Distributor ID: Raspbian
Description   : Raspbian GNU/Linux 9.11 (stretch)
Release       : 9.11
Codename      : stretch
Arch          : armv6l 
Model         : Raspberry Pi Model B Rev 2 
Kernel        : 4.19.66+ 
Shell         : bash 4.4.12 
CPU           : ARMv6-compatible rev 7 (v6l) (1) @ 0.7GHz 
Memory        : 512MB

Initial download

I have a 'Downloads' folder, so I did this:

cd ~/Downloads

Once there I can download the following tar ball:

wget https://download.lighttpd.net/lighttpd/releases-1.4.x/lighttpd-1.4.55.tar.gz

Than you must extract the tar ball:

tar -xvf lighttpd-1.4.55.tar.gz

Finally go to the folder created with:

cd ~/Downloads/lighttpd-1.4.55/

So for the newbies these are always presented as the next steps (ie. as printed in many wiki's, forum and README files):

./configure         *needs a lot of other options
make                *might need more parameters
sudo make install   *beware!!!*

You should only make install if you know what your doing and know how to uninstall.

But this does not work for most cases, since it does not include de addons needed.

I had to use this (many times to pinpoint the dependecies):

./configure --with-openssl --with-openssl-libs=/usr/include/openssl --with-lua \
 --with-attr --with-ldap --with-memcached --with-gdbm --with-webdav-props \
 --with-webdav-locks --with-fam

Now please note this: " error messages are always your cryptographic life saver! ", meaning: difficult to understand but the best clue you have to solve the problem. So take your time to understand the messages.

NOTE: the '--with-memcached' option is a annoyance (ie. pain-in-the-ass) error, since it is spelled wrong in most every blog, forum, wiki on the web. This consumed much of my time. Beware!

But, this will only work after all the dependencies were meet....follow on:

Dependency saga:

I had to interactively run ./configure many times to pinpoint each dependency package and search for the correct one needed (ie. that the compiler accepted and recognized). Many misleading, outdated information on the most blogs, wiki's, and forums.

The packages I needed to install (so far) were:

apache2-utils                 2.4.25-3+deb9u9
build-essential               12.3
libattr1-dev:armhf            1:2.4.47-2
libbz2-dev:armhf              1.0.6-8.1
libfam-dev:armhf              2.7.0-17.2
libfam0:armhf                 2.7.0-17.2
libfcgi-dev:armhf             2.4.0-8.4
libgdbm-dev:armhf             1.8.3-14
libglib2.0-dev                2.50.3-2+deb9u2
libldap2-dev:armhf            2.4.44+dfsg-5+deb9u1
liblua5.1-0-dev:armhf         5.1.5-8.1
libmemcached-dev              1.0.18-4.1
libpcre3-dev:armhf            2:8.39-3
libsqlite3-dev:armhf          3.16.2-5+deb9u1
libssl-dev:armhf              1.1.0l-1~deb9u1
libterm-readline-perl-perl    1.0303-1
libuu-dev                     0.5.20-9
libxml2-dev:armhf             2.9.4+dfsg1-2.2+deb9u2
libzip-dev:armhf              1.1.2-1.1
lsb-base                      9.20161125+rpi1
lua5.1                        5.1.5-8.1
memcached                     1.4.33-1
rrdtool                       1.6.0-1+b1
spawn-fcgi                    1.6.4-1
sqlite3                       3.16.2-5+deb9u1
uuid-dev:armhf                2.29.2-1+deb9u1

REMARK:
How I created this list:

   dpkg-query -W -f='${binary:Package} ${Version}\t${Maintainer}\n'

also note this: ${field[;width]} width negative is left align, positive is right alignment.

dpkg-query -W -f='${binary:Package;-26}\t${Version}\n' build-essential libglib2.0-dev libssl-dev libpcre3-dev libbz2-dev libzip-dev  libxml2-dev sqlite3 lua5.1 apache2-utils libsqlite3-dev libuu-dev lsb-base  libfam0 libfam-dev rrdtool spawn-fcgi libterm-readline-perl-perl  libldap2-dev libgdbm-dev uuid-dev libfcgi-dev libattr1-dev liblua5.1-0-dev  memcached libmemcached-dev libfam-dev

To install dependencies you should do this:

sudo apt-get install \
 build-essential libglib2.0-dev libssl-dev libpcre3-dev libbz2-dev libzip-dev \
 libxml2-dev sqlite3 lua5.1 apache2-utils libsqlite3-dev libuu-dev lsb-base \
 libfam0 libfam-dev rrdtool spawn-fcgi libterm-readline-perl-perl \
 libldap2-dev libgdbm-dev uuid-dev libfcgi-dev libattr1-dev liblua5.1-0-dev \
 memcached libmemcached-dev libfam-dev

And some of the above installed additional packages with them (ie. dependencies of dependences) automatically.

After many hours, finally I did 'make' it!

And this is what you get when running the binary created in de 'src' folder:

~/Downloads/lighttpd-1.4.55/src $ ./lighttpd -V

lighttpd/1.4.55 (ssl) - a light and fast webserver

Event Handlers:

    + select (generic)
    + poll (Unix)
    + epoll (Linux)
    - /dev/poll (Solaris)
    - eventports (Solaris)
    - kqueue (FreeBSD)
    - libev (generic)

Network handler:

    + linux-sendfile
    - freebsd-sendfile
    - darwin-sendfile
    - solaris-sendfilev
    + writev
    + write
    - mmap support

Features:

    + IPv6 support
    + zlib support
    + bzip2 support
    + crypt support
    + SSL support
    + PCRE support
    - MySQL support
    - PgSQL support
    - DBI support
    - Kerberos support
    + LDAP support
    - PAM support
    + memcached support
    + FAM support
    + LUA support
    + xml support
    + SQLite support
    + GDBM support

Last but not the end, yet!

Well, now you must believe we are going to the final step: sudo make install, not yet...

Here we got stuck, and I am having trouble, that is, the make install does not create the needed folders and does complain about missing pl scripts (only found one of them).

/bin/bash: /usr/share/lighttpd/use-ipv6.pl: No such file or directory
/bin/bash: /usr/share/lighttpd/create-mime.assign.pl: No such file or directory
/bin/bash: /usr/share/lighttpd/include-conf-enabled.pl: No such file or directory

So now I need help from our linux community to finish the install. Please share your thoughts/knowledge/ideas.

signing off for now.