Web Server @ Home
is where all this discussion started. This is follow up to that
discussion. Please read it if you want to know motivation behind this
discussion.
Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. According to Cygwin Official Site (), GNU + Cygnus + Windows = cygwin. Following information is taken from cygwin official site, as it is,
Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:
DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.
A collection of tools, which provide Linux look and feel.
What Isn't Cygwin?
Cygwin is not a way to run native linux apps on Windows. You have to rebuild your application from source if you want it to run on Windows.
Cygwin is not
a way to magically make native Windows apps aware of UNIX ®
functionality, like signals, ptys, etc. Again, you need to build your
apps from source if you want to take advantage of Cygwin functionality.
Cygwin Installation is presented here with emphasis on web server requirements.
Please note that do not install Apache using cygwin setup,
because we want to build Apache for Windows Native Machine because of
performance reasons. Also I am going to install SSH server to
facilitate remote server management. FTP server is not included here
since there is no need of FTP (Local Machine) but can be installed by
following similar steps, presented here.
cygwin Installation on Windows XP
Go to and download setup.exe
Locate following icon on cygwin.com and click on it to download.
Choose Installation Type
Select Install from Internet.
Choose Installation Directory - As per your requirement
Select Install For All Users and select Unix as Default Text File Type.
Select
Local Package Directory. The folder you specify here is the location
where the downloaded installation files will be saved. Enter the path
of your choice highly recommended.
Select Connection Type -
Same setting as your browser. If your antivirus/firewall program will
pop up after you click Next, to check if you want to allow
cygwin_setup.exe to access the Internet. Yes, that's exactly what we
want!
Choose Download Site/Mirror, nearest to your location
Select Packages - Click to select full view. You only need to select following additions to the by-default selected packages
Select
Apache2 Src - First Select Apache2, then select src and unselect
binary. (You'll see few boxes along with version number. Select
appropriate box)
Click Next
Now you can take a break and drink some coffee while the files are downloaded and installed.
Install icons as per your wish
Now back to work... Check if installation is okay - perform quick sanity check
Any package missing can be installed any time, even later. But it may cause more pain in detecting if something is broken
Now lets setup SSH server
typessh-host-config
When the script asks you about "privilege separation", answer yes
When the script asks about "create local user sshd", answer yes
When the script asks you about "install sshd as a service", answer yes
When the script asks you for "CYGWIN=" your answer is ntsec
Start sshd service by 1. net start sshd 2. cygrunsrv --start sshd or from Windows XP service Panel
Test
your SSH server by trying SSH from different screen/computer and login
to this machine. Please note that firewall/router needs to be
configured. Please allow port 22 for SSH connection to work
Username, Machine/Host Name & Passwords are windows' ones.
Setting up cygserver - It is very much required else your apache server will not work.
Please run following command to install it as service
on cygwin.com and click on it to download.