in reply to Apache Server restart fails

Syntax error on line 5 of /etc/apache2/httpd.conf:

Would you paste the first ten lines or so of httpd.conf? (so that people can vet it for correctness)

I suspect your problem is that the mod_perl module was left unloaded. Some popular server OSes use symbolic links to tell which apache modules to load. Poke around /etc/apache2/, particularly the mods-available and mods-enabled directories, if they exist.

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Re^2: Apache Server restart fails
by rianne_k (Novice) on Mar 02, 2012 at 13:36 UTC
    This is my httpd.conf file: 
    Alias /www /home/Documents/

<Directory /home/Documents/*/perl/>
    SetHandler perl-script
    PerlResponseHandler ModPerl::Registry
    PerlOptions +ParseHeaders
    AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
    Options +ExecCGI
</Directory>

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    The mods-available and mods-enabled directories exist, and there is a bunch of .load files in them. What should I look for there?
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      I am guessing you are using a Debian-based distribution, then.

      If so, you can type a2enmod perl to create the appropriate symlink.

      If not, you should find a .load file in mods-available that loads the mod_perl .so file, and create a symbolic link of that file to mods-enabled, like this:

      # cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
# ln -s ../mods-available/perl.load .

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      Oh, and in the case it /is/ a debian-based distribution, please paste the output of dpkg -l|fgrep apache, so we can look for any missing packages. You should at least have libapache2-mod-perl2 (if you installed mod_perl through your distribution's package manager (which is highly recommended))

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        Thanks for the suggestions. I created the symlink with a2enmod perl. When I to restart the server now, I get a slightly different error message : 
        
rianne@rianne-OXYL015:~$ sudo a2enmod perl
Enabling module perl.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  service apache2 restart
rianne@rianne-OXYL015:~$ service apache2 restart
ulimit: 88: error setting limit (Operation not permitted)
apache2: Syntax error on line 203 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Syntax
+ error on line 1 of /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/perl.load: Cannot load 
+/usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_perl.so into server: /usr/lib/apache2/mo
+dules/mod_perl.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or di
+rectory
Action 'configtest' failed.
The Apache error log may have more information.
   ...fail!

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        I do have the libapache2-mod-perl2 installed: 
        
 dpkg -l|fgrep apache
ii  apache2                                2.2.20-1ubuntu1.2          
+             Apache HTTP Server metapackage
ii  apache2-mpm-worker                     2.2.20-1ubuntu1.2          
+             Apache HTTP Server - high speed threaded model
ii  apache2-threaded-dev                   2.2.20-1ubuntu1.2          
+             Apache development headers - threaded MPM
ii  apache2-utils                          2.2.20-1ubuntu1.2          
+             utility programs for webservers
ii  apache2.2-bin                          2.2.20-1ubuntu1.2          
+             Apache HTTP Server common binary files
ii  apache2.2-common                       2.2.20-1ubuntu1.2          
+             Apache HTTP Server common files
rc  libapache2-mod-perl2                   2.0.5-2ubuntu1             
+             Integration of perl with the Apache2 web server
ii  libbatik-java                          1.7.ubuntu-6ubuntu1        
+             xml.apache.org SVG Library

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        Do you see anything missing in there ? Cheers, Rianne
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