I think I will not be the only one that wanted to try out haproxy 1.5 release on an older Ubuntu release to enjoy the new goodies like enhanced SSL support.

The easiest way to create your own packages is to download a version of the haproxy source code for building a new haproxy deb file.  Then you go and steal the debian templates from a prior version.  You will have to do editing for some of the files involved.  It’s good to satisfy dpkg.  Since working with debian,  I find it very rewarding to keep my package manager(s) working well.  It helps stability, I could just copy over the executable over the old one but that’s just not how it’s done well.

The goal is to have a more recent version of haproxy running on a Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick ( 32bit / 64bit ) install.  The cool thing about manually rolling a deb with haproxy is that it is small, there is really only 1 executable of concern and it needs to go in /usr/sbin  (so prefix =/usr ).  That’s the debian way.
If you use  the debian templates from the official package like haproxy-1.4.8, you will create a good .deb that will not overwrite your existing configuration as the groundwork you use already covers that scenario, no need to reinvent it.  You will have to tweak some files though.   And for safety sake, just make a copy of your haproxy config files before reading this further.

First, you need a complete build environment, as root or with sudo do:

You will also need a few more packages to satisfy dependencies for building haproxy itself , you need those too (last 2 are optional if you don’t sign the package with a key … most of us won’t) , but it will be a few warnings less. You will still get some since you’re not signing it (see later in the article).

Now we are all set, we need to get the sources we will use as a template from the maverick source launchpad.

– haproxy_1.4.8-1.debian.tar.gz
– haproxy_1.4.8-1.dsc
– haproxy_1.4.8.orig.tar.gz

Put them somewhere, I prefer doing this sort of work in a subdir under /usr/local/src , for instance /usr/local/src/haproxy_old and unpack them all. (you don’t really need the dsc file either):

This will create 2 directories, one called debian the other one haproxy-1.4.8. It is the debian directory we want in particular. I don’t even think I touched the original source but I unpacked it anyway so I could compair that source with the one I’m about to build.

At this point we will create a new directory for our future version, let’s call it /usr/local/src/haproxy_new , we will have to download the haproxy 1.5 sources now. I see on the homepage that dev17 version looks like a good candidate, I will probably be very happy if that runs with what I have in my haproxy.cfg configuration now, before testing new features.

At the time of writing this, the file of that version was called haproxy-ss-LATEST.tar.gz. Download it and change the name to haproxy_1.5.orig.tar.gz and unpack it.

It should unpack in this sub-directory: haproxy-1.5-dev17

At this point you can already try and build it manually, before debianizing the process. Read the README file. I found valuable info in order to create my make command. I used that info to change the debian build.

– USE_PCRE=1 to use libpcre, in whatever form is available on your system (shared or static)
– USE_STATIC_PCRE=1 to use a static version of libpcre even if the dynamic one is available. This will enhance portability.
– USE_OPENSSL=1
– USE_ZLIB=1

I wanted it to be fairly portable but built for the machine, so I include a static PCRE, according to the docs, this speeds up haproxy times 3 when using regexes. I also wanted the new SSL goodies and ZLIB support. Try to make haproxy now. All the builds are destined to run on a kernel > 2.6.28.

Any errors here will have to be taken care of before building .deb files. But if it works, you can now proceed and copy the unpacked debian from /usr/local/src/haproxy_old/debian and move it under haproxy-1.5-dev17 sub-directory.

Before building this package, we have to mod some files ( rules , changelog, control )

I added a section to the changelog , It’s cleaner for the people behind you even though it isn’t official, pay good attention to the syntax of that file, it’s picky. I added this at the top:

Next in line is the control file, since I’ll be building a version that includes pcre static, I don’t require it on the target host. I also added myself as author, I don’t wan’t others to receive hate mail destined for me, so I changed this (diff format):

Finally, to modify the rules file properly, you need to have a working make combination, so a make command line that builds haproxy successfully. Using my make command line, the top of the rules files looks like :

Now it’s all ready to be built. Lets do it …

at the end of the build process you get

If you got that far, it probably worked, but in the end it can’t sign since I have no key, so that fails but if the rest all went well… you just cd to the parent directory and there will be 3 new files in there. For the 32bit version you get:

– haproxy_1.5-dev17_i386.build
– haproxy_1.5-dev17_i386.changes
– haproxy_1.5-dev17_i386.deb

If you built this on a x86_64 machine, you’ll get:

– haproxy_1.5-dev17_amd64.build
– haproxy_1.5-dev17_amd64.changes
– haproxy_1.5-dev17_amd64.deb

Now you can just dpkg -i the appropriate package in your system. Before restarting haproxy you might want to check your config against the new version first, I like putting an alias in place for this. Use the appropriate paths. Installing it will probably mean restarting haproxy.

And you have haproxy under dpkg control on an EOL maverick. This can be redone on any platform of course. I used a XEN VM to build de 64bit Maverick, and a linode vps to build the 32bit version.

One more remark. This will build an executable with debuggin symbols inside, you can use strip command on the executable. If you want decent core dumps keep them in. But if you don’t, do this

As this is dev, keep an eye on the workings, it looks pretty stable but I’ve not tested or stressed it too much yet. You can download the binary packages I made and try them out.

– haproxy_1.5-dev17_amd64.build
– haproxy_1.5-dev17_amd64.deb
– haproxy_1.5-dev17.dsc
– haproxy_1.5-dev17_i386.changes
– haproxy_1.5.orig.tar.gz
– haproxy_1.5-dev17_amd64.changes
– haproxy_1.5-dev17.debian.tar.gz
– haproxy_1.5-dev17_i386.build
– haproxy_1.5-dev17_i386.deb