I am not sure if I understand this correctly. But I believe you have the wrong tar file. You have a tar file for the GNU operating system. Although the GNU operating system uses the same linux kernel as a lot of linux distro, but the GNU operation system maybe setup different than the RH9 operating system. So what I would recomment is use one of the binaries i.e. httpd-2.0.49.tar.gz located in the directory below:
Index of /dist/httpd Also one more thing. Rh9 comes with apache web server already available for installation. When you installed RH9, you could have installed it then. In the future since you are using RH9 as your operating system. Always try to use the RPM, when installing new software. It makes life so much easier.
I hope this is helpful.