Starting Apache on Windows . Starting Apache on Unix . ... If the Port specified in the configuration file is the default of 80 (or any other port below 1024), then it is necessary to have root privileges in order to start Apache, so that it can bind to this privileged port. ... As an alternative to invoking the httpd binary directly, a shell script called apachectl is provided which can be used to control the daemon process with simple commands such as apachectl start and apachectl stop . ...