HTTPD won't start

[Kerrygeek]

I've been running this Zabbix server for several years, running 1.6.4 on CentOS 5.2. Starting last Friday (naturally, a day I was on vacation) the httpd server won't start. If I reboot the server it doesn't start and if I try to start it manually it immediately says "Failed". It's not putting anything in the messages file, in the error_log file it says "suEXEC mechanism enabled (wrapper: /usr/sbin/suexec)" when I try to start it.

We haven't changed anything on the server in quite a while, the drives are not full and MySQL and Zabbix_server are running fine. In fact, I'm getting my normal e-mail alerts from the server for the things I'm monitoring. I just can't log in from a browser because Apache isn't running.

Any ideas what would keep Apache from starting and not putting anything in the error_log or /var/log/messages files?

Thanks,
Kerry

[Kerrygeek]

Here's an update to my problem. When I do:
service httpd fullstatus
I get this:
ELinks: Connection Refused

Anybody know what causes this? There's nothing in the logs, I'm researching this error message now.

Kerry

[tchjts1]

SELinux causing the problem?

SELinux has caused us problems when launching Apache.
We disable it now.

As root: echo 0 > /selinux/enforce

[Kerrygeek]

Thanks for the reply! No, I checked that, selinux is completely disabled on this box.

I haven't gotten any more hints other than apache won't start and give that error from Elinks but I don't know what it's trying to do with elinks. It's like it's using Elinks to open some link and it's failing.

Thanks,
Kerry

[tchjts1]

Did you happen to look in /var/log/messages for anything that might be suspect?

[Kerrygeek]

It's not putting anything in /var/log/messages at all, and nothing in error_log that tells us anything. We turned up the log level but it's still not telling us anything that gives any hints about why httpd won't start. Also, when you do:
service httpd start
it comes back immediately with "Failed", no delay like it's trying to do anything.

As far as I know nobody has made any changes on the server, that's what's bugging me. Only 2 of us even have the credentials to log in to this box and I was out of town, the other guy isn't one who tinkers so I don't know what changed to keep apache from starting. This box has been running solid for several years, the only change I've made is adding devices and putting in a cron job a year or 2 ago to reboot it once a month.

Kerry

[Kerrygeek]

We googled it and found suggestions like upgrade elinks and apache so the other guy here did that but it didn't help (I didn't think it would but it didn't hurt to try). Everything else is fine, I'm getting alerts, MySQL and Zabbix_server are both fine, just apache isn't cooperating.

Kerry

[tchjts1]

Firewall? I am out of ideas.

Did you guys look at this page? (Search keyword "elinks")

http://microdevsys.com/wp/linux-enable-extended-httpd-status-reports-in-apache-through-service-fullstatus/

[Kerrygeek]

We both independently found that exact page! So far it hasn't been any help. Thanks for trying, at this point I'll take all the help we can get. I checked the firewall, iptables didn't have any rules set but I stopped the service just to make sure, it didn't make any difference.

I use Zabbix all day, I've felt handicapped today without seeing what my Citrix servers are doing and what my bandwidth looks like on some critical connections!

We need to upgrade, if we can't figure out what's happening with apache maybe we'll just start from scratch on a newer version. I don't want to lose all my devices so we might have to do several incremental upgrades but we'll figure out something.

Thanks for your help!
Kerry

[heaje]

You can just do an apache re-install. Its totally separate from the zabbix services. You don't need to upgrade zabbix to try a new apache version. Heck, you could just put the web server on a different box entirely and not do anything to your current server.

[Kerrygeek]

We may try that later today, thanks! We're on 1.6.4 so we need to upgrade Zabbix anyway, I just don't want to have to take the time right now and it's been working so well I hate to mess with it.

We upgraded Apache yesterday, we'll try to uninstall it today.

Kerry

[Kerrygeek]

It looks like that fixed it. We never found what the root cause was but reinstalling Apache and PHP did it and Zabbix is back up to 100%. Thanks for all the suggestions.

Kerry Miller
Victoria, TX