So I tried something kind of new. I completely removed the directory with the non-functioning apache install. I went back to the source, did a make clean, a new configure using the same parameters as before:
./configure --prefix=/opt/apache3 --enable-auth-dbm=shared --enable-expires=shared --enable-headers=shared --enable-rewrite=shared --enable-mime-magic=shared --enable-info=shared --enable-status=shared --enable-userdir=shared --enable-http --enable-so --enable-ssl=static --with-ssl=/opt/openssl098d --with-perl=/opt/perl58 --with-ndbm --enable-ldap=shared --enable-auth_ldap=shared --with-ldap=/usr/local/OpenLDAP.2.3 Had SHLIB_PATH set to "/opt/openssl098d/lib:/usr/local/OpenLDAP.2.3/lib" as well as CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS set with -I and -L flags for those two non-standard directories. This is all the same as what I had done before. After the make, make install, I went in to the installed directory and made as minimal changes as I could. I changed Listen port in the main httpd.conf to 8040 and the Listen port (as well as the VirtualHost port) in ssl.conf to 8045 so it wouldn't step on the toes of the production apache process. I then changed the User and Group directives in httpd.conf to the webadmin user which the other apache process runs as. Launched this just about plain jane apache using apachectl startssl. Connecting via http to 8040, everything looks fine. Connecting via https to port 8045 shows the behavior of child processing hanging in a waiting state. Am I wrong in thinking this is a permissions issue? Or perhaps something is funky with the fact that the SSL libraries are in a strange spot? I've tried adding the library path to envvars in apache3/bin and having PassEnv SHLIB_PATH in the httpd.conf. However, the WORKING installation is linked to these exact same libraries and although there's a PassEnv command in it's httpd.conf, nothing was added to envvars. If it *is* a permissions issue, what does mod_ssl need permission to get to in order to function properly? I notice that the ssl_scache.dir and ssl_scache.pag files are created in the logs directory, (though the .dir file is 0 bytes) both owned by webadmin, so that user can at least CREATE files in that directory.
