Apache dies after modifying httpd.conf

[Bogdan Ghita <b....@jack.see.plym.ac.uk>]

Hello

I have been trying lately to install webmail, a web interface for mail
servers. As a first requirement of the program, the host must have a virtual
host setup. I modified httpd.conf to create a virtual host, then restarted
httpd (killalll -HUP httpd). Ever since, I couldn't make httpd daemon work
again; it just...dies soon after I am trying to start it. I changed
httpd.conf to the original configuration, I rebooted, nothing fixed the
problem.
It is strange that, neither before nor after httpd dies, there is no error
reported. apachectl reports 'Syntax OK', the /var/log/httpd/error_log is
empty, there is no logged trace whatsoever about a possible error. The only
kind of errors I found were when running strace httpd (see end of the
e-mail)
Just to confirm, httpd was working before I did the changes in httpd.conf,
and there were no changes to any other configuration files. My best guess
currently is that there is some sort of lock file (i checked /var/run, there
is no httpd.pid there, and also /var/lock, which is empty) that was created
when I did the change.

Any help would be appreciated

Best regards
Bogdan Ghita

The filtered output of strace httpd (only some the errors are shown):

--
open("/etc/shadow", O_RDONLY)           = 6
shmat(6, 0x1, 0x1ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
)                      = ?
shmat(6, 0x1, 0x2ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
--
chmod("/var/state/httpd/mm.981.sem", 0600) = 0
msgrcv(1075941396ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
, {1081411585,
"\353K\213\223p\3\0\0%\377\0\0\0\213\22\366DB\1\20u*\353"...}, 30
, 0, MSG_NOERROR|MSG_EXCEPT|IPC_NOWAIT|0xffffc7ff) = 0
open("/var/log/httpd/error_log", O_WRONLY|O_APPEND|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE,
0666) =
4
shmat(4, 0x4, 0ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
--
read(5, "[PHP]\n\n;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;\n; Abo"..., 8192) = 8192
read(5, "ure off, and use error logging i"..., 8192) = 8192
--
open("/etc/protocols", O_RDONLY)        = 5
shmat(5, 0x1, 0x1ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
)                      = ?
shmat(5, 0x1, 0x2ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
--
fstat64(5, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0700, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
shmat(5, 0x8329430, 0x2ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
--
open("/tmp/fcgi/dynamic/fcgi_dynamic_mbox",
O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC|O_LARGEFILE
, 0600) = 5
shmat(5, 0x5, 0ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
--
open("/usr/lib/tcl8.3/init.tcl", O_RDONLY) = 5
shmat(5, 0xbfffea00, 0x2ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
--
open("/etc/hosts", O_RDONLY)            = 5
shmat(5, 0x1, 0x1ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
)                      = ?
shmat(5, 0x1, 0x2ptrace: umoven: Input/output error
--
open("/var/log/httpd/access_log", O_WRONLY|O_APPEND|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE,
0644) =
 5
shmat(5, 0x5, 0ptrace: umoven: Input/output error)





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