Strange Apache error (appears to be related to bad pidfile)

[Chris Brooks <ma...@gmail.com>]

Good morning,

I've had a strange problem with Apache twice in the past week, and I'm out
of ideas as to what might be going on.

Here's the background: I run a website that uses a plain-vanilla Apache
server to serve images, and uses mod_proxy to forward requests for
everything else to a backend mod_perl server on a different port on the same
ip address.  (I think this scenario used to be documented here:
http://perl.apache.org/docs/1.0/guide/install.html#Installation_Scenarios_for_mod_perl_and_Other_Components,
but it doesn't appear to be there anymore.)

The problem that I ran into is that after running on the same configuration
for years, and without a reboot for a month or so, the plain-vanilla Apache
server  stopped serving requests.

   - My first try was to execute apachectl stop and then apachectl start.
   apachectl printed: "/usr/local/apache-light/bin/apachectl start: httpd
   started".  However, it wasn't running (which I verified by trying to run
   apachectl status and then apachectl stop).
   -  The first time this happened, I was running Apache 1.3.37.  I
   downloaded the tarball for Apache 1.3.41 and installed that in place of
   1.3.37.  The second time this error occurred it occurred with 1.3.41.
   - No messages were written to the access_log or error_log
   - /usr/local/apache-light/bin/apachectl configtest returned "Syntax OK"
   - apachectl points to the correct pidfile (at least it's the one
   specified in /usr/local/apache-light/conf/httpd.con), and it looks to me
   like root has perfectly reasonable rights to the pidfile.

I was eventually able to restart the apache process the first time by
deleting the pidfile.  When I ran apachectl start without a pidfile, the
apache process started up and ran without problems for 3 days.  The second
time this happened, it wasn't enough to delete the pid file.  I again
reinstalled apache, and went so far as to reboot the server.  (fsck did not
find any errors on reboot.)  This time, I was only able to restart the sever
after running the following:

[root@data2]# touch /usr/local/apache-light/logs/httpd.pid
[root@data2]# rm -f /usr/local/apache-light/logs/httpd.pid
[root@data2]# /usr/local/apache-light/bin/apachectl start

This finally worked, and the server has been serving requests for 3 days
now.

Any ideas on what might be going on?  I'd love to have some ideas before
this happens again -- it's been a stressful 45 minutes each time while I
scrambled to try to figure out how to restart it.

Thanks!
-Chris

Re: Strange Apache error (appears to be related to bad pidfile)

[Chris Brooks <ma...@gmail.com>]

Hi Perrin,

Cool, that's a good suggestion.  I'll work with httpd directly if it happens
again.

Thanks,
Chris

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Perrin Harkins <ph...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 6:50 AM, Chris Brooks <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > My first try was to execute apachectl stop and then apachectl start.
>
> You won't see the errors if you use apachectl.  Just talk to httpd
> directly instead.
>
> - Perrin
>

Re: Strange Apache error (appears to be related to bad pidfile)

[Perrin Harkins <ph...@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 6:50 AM, Chris Brooks <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My first try was to execute apachectl stop and then apachectl start.

You won't see the errors if you use apachectl.  Just talk to httpd
directly instead.

- Perrin