The following reply was made to PR general/2629; it has been noted by GNATS.
From: Lars Eilebrecht <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: (Apache GNATS) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Subject: Re: general/2629: apachectl "fibs" about starting httpd Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 19:52:27 +0200 (CEST) -----Forwarded message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>----- From: Richard Lloyd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: general/2629: apachectl "fibs" about starting httpd > If there is an error in your config file apachectl > should display the error message from httpd and the message > "apachectl start: httpd could not be started". Under HP-UX, if you leave the Group setting in httpd.conf as #-1 (which is what it's set to by default), you get "httpd started" output by apachectl and yet the httpd dies immediately. The error_log says: [Sat Jul 18 00:11:57 1998] [alert] Child 997 returned a Fatal error... Apache is exiting! [Sat Jul 18 00:11:57 1998] [alert] (22)Invalid argument: setgid: unable to set group id to Group 4294967295 Similarly giving a non-existent user ID (e.g. #29238 when that UID isn't in the password field) for the User field in httpd.conf causes the same problem - httpd exits, but apachectl reports "httpd started" - error_log in that case says: [Sat Jul 18 00:13:35 1998] [alert] (2)No such file or directory: getpwuid: couldn't determine user name from uid 29238, you pro bably need to modify the User directive [Sat Jul 18 00:13:36 1998] [alert] Child 1014 returned a Fatal error... Apache is exiting! > Severity-Changed-From-To: serious-non-critical I would put it back to serious :-) Problem is that outputting "httpd started" is a little misleading in the above cases (although "strictly true" because the httpd process does actually start) because it dies during the initialisation. A check that the process is still running after a couple of seconds would make the message output by apachectl more believable. I don't know if any other config changes other than User/Group would cause httpd to die during initialisation (and after forking, hence the failure of the original httpd to return an error status code), but it's something apachectl doesn't pick up when it really should. Richard K. Lloyd, E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Connect, WWW: http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~rkl/ 3, Brownlow Street, Liverpool University, Merseyside, UK. L69 3GL --------------End of forwarded message-------------------------
