I decided a few hours ago to take a daunting leap forward and upgrade my Ubuntu web server to 14.04. I recently upgraded another computer from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04. I was pleased with an outcome.
I decided to perform same upgrade on my web server. Things went pretty smooth until I realized apache2 was failing to start after this upgrade. To my dismay my web server was broken after upgrading from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04.
I received these error messages below.
The apache2 configtest failed.
Output of config test was:
apache2: Syntax error on line 210 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Syntax error on line 1 of /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/ruby.load: Cannot load /usr/lib/apache2/modules
mod_ruby.so into server: /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_ruby.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Action ‘configtest’ failed.
The Apache error log may have more information.
Actually an apache error log did not have more information. I fixed that line 210 error by removing ruby as an enabled mod with this command:
rm /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/ruby.load
I then tried to start apache2 with “apache2ctl start” command. I received an error again only this time it changed to:
apache2: Syntax error on line 214 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Could not open configuration file /etc/apache2/httpd.conf: No such file or directory
I fixed this error by creating a blank httpd.conf file using a “touch /etc/apache2/httpd.conf” command. An httpd.conf file is not needed on my web server but just creating a blank file with name of httpd.conf cleared that error. I then tried to start apache2 yet again.
Well what do you know, another error message:
AH00526: Syntax error on line of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Invalid command ‘LockFile’, perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration Action ‘start’ failed.
I resolved that error by replacing this line:
LockFile ${APACHE_LOCK_DIR}/accept.lock
with this one
Mutex file:${APACHE_LOCK_DIR} default
in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
Finally, apache2 started successfully this time. I tested two of my web sites hosted on this newly upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 web server. Both web sites were accessible and now I could breath a little bit easier.