Apache "backup" plan

[force5]

Hello,
I had an incident 2 weeks ago where our Apache server went down. httpd would not start and nothing was showing in the logs except for the fact that it failed to start. Due to the pressure I was getting from our website owners, I reloaded Fedora Core 3 and it has been fine since. I am not very familiar with re-compiling, etc. Normally, when someone calls about a problem with a website, I can find it in their logs or the httpd logs. I even looked in the system logs this time, but found nothing. How do you get around this? What is a good backup plan in case fatal errors occur.

Thanks a million...

 

[siberian]

Well first off you can increase your errorlogging to its maximum in apache, that might give you something in the apache error_log (not the vhost log, crash errors won't get logged there).

I am assuming you tried to reboot?

Recompiling apache is a pretty trivial process, I'd try that first. it almost sounds like it could not find a directory or some such thing.

Recompiling apache is as easy as

./configure --prefix=/path/to/your/apache/dir
make
make install

That is assuming a base apache works for you.

 

[force5]

Great! Thanks Siberian. I have never recompiled anything and was nervous about messing something else up in the process. This company is simply using the Apache that came bundled with Fedora Core 3. So...when you mean:
./configure --prefix=/path/to/your/apache/dir what does the --prefix mean?
And, when I do this, I bet it will reset all of their configuration data in the .conf file right? I would just have to throw a back up in place?

 

[siberian]

if you do a ./configure --help it will explain each option.

You should first do 'httpd -l' and see what is compiled into your apache. Make sure you get those options into the configure statement.

Do make a backup of your httpd.conf file but the install process is good about not overwriting it.