Re: [tlug] Did Apache change everything? (Setting up virtual hosts)

[Ian Barwick <barwick@example.com>]

2010/1/20 Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com>:
> Dave M G writes:
(...)
>  >         ServerName www.local_site.com
>  >         ServerAlias local_site.com
>  >         ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
>  >
>  >         DocumentRoot /var/www/local_site.com
>  >         <Directory /var/www/local_site.com/>
>  >                 Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
>  >                 # pcw AllowOverride None
>  >                 AllowOverride All
>  >                 Order allow,deny
>  >                 allow from all
>  >                 # This directive allows us to have apache2's default
>  > start page
>  >                 # in /apache2-default/, but still have / go to the right
>  > place
>  >                 # Commented out for Ubuntu
>  >                 #RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/
>  >         </Directory>
>  >
>  >         ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/local_site.com/error.log
>  >
>  >         # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
>  >         # alert, emerg.
>  >         LogLevel warn
>  >
>  >         CustomLog /var/log/apache2/local_site.com/access.log combined
>  >         ServerSignature On
>
> I don't understand the CustomLog ... combined.  I thought that would
> combine the access log with the error log, but you've specified a
> separate ErrorLog.  I don't see what that would cause the problems
> you've noticed, though.

"combined" is one of the logfile formats defined in the standard httpd.conf,
maybe because it combines the common (in the sense of standard) request
logging with additional data provided by the client, i.e. referer (sic) and user
agent.

>  > Then I reloaded and restarted Apache, and it said:
>  >
>  > [fail]
>  >
>  > No error output, no nothing. Just [fail].
>
> That kind of thing is why I haven't even tried Ubuntu yet. :-)

That sounds like Apache is not finding (or being able to write to) at least
one log directory, which causes Apache to fail silently. I've been
caught out by that on one or two occasions. It's not the distribution's
problem.


Ian Barwick