Newbie: make test failure FIXED!

[Greg Leidreiter <ge...@ozemail.com.au>]

From: G.W. Haywood [mailto:ged@jubileegroup.co.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, 12 July 2000 3:45 AM
To: mod_perl Mailing List
Subject: Re: Newbie: make test failure!


Hi there,

On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Michael Robinton wrote:

> On Sat, 8 Jul 2000, Greg Leidreiter wrote:
> > but when I run 'make test'
> > 	httpd listening on port 8529
> > 	letting apache warm up...\c
> > 	still waiting for server to warm up.................not ok

> I always get that error. I always ignore the error and everything
> seems to work fine.

Running `make test' successfully is IMPORTANT!  Please try to find the
reason that it doesn't work and let us know!  At the same time you'll
be doing a service to the mod_perl community and helping yourself
learn about mod_perl.  Try to understand everything in the test
configuration.  Is there already a process listening on port 8529?
Can you start Apache manually with the test configuration?  Do you
know where the logs are?  Anything in them?

73,
Ged.

---------------------------------
That seems like a fair call Ged.

I have messed around with the config of this so much now that it's difficult
to isolate the specific cause. However, here is a potted history in case
it's of use to anyone.

So make test failed, and as Michael suggested I ignored it and sure enough
Apache seemed to start and run OK (mod_perl.c came up under httpd -l) - did
all the things that a good web server should , EXCEPT that it returned 403
for every URL I entered into the browser.

I rebuilt Apache as a standalone server (ie: using vanilla defaults /
without Mod_perl) and suffered exactly the same problems (make test failure,
constant 403 returns), which seemed to let mod_perl off the hook as a
culprit at least. Moreover the latter problem suggested a fairly simple
config error on my part - but it took me a while to track it down :-)

Eventually, I noticed that the ServerRoot permissions were set to drwx------
which prevents user "nobody" from accessing this directory. Never crossed my
mind before that this was an issue - I simply thought that "nobody" was
interested in the DocumentRoot tree (and associated Symlinks). So reset
permissions on ServerRoot and hey presto! no more 403 errors!

Next I recompiled Apache from/with mod_perl and make test no longer fails!
So I assume these issues are related...

Cheers,
Greg.