Apache quirks
Dec. 14th, 2005 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lovingbothOne of the best ways to get the Apache webserver to fail to start is to ask it to have a logfile in a directory that doesn't exist. I suspect every user has been caught by this at least once.
This 'feature' has doubtless cost users thousands of hours work, not least as it won't tell you exactly why it's not starting (or at least 1.3 via webmin doesn't, they may have fixed this in 2.x) or ask if you want to create the directory or any other useful response.
But... if you ask it to serve webpages from a non-existent directory, it'll start up happily, and not moan or give any hint as to what's (not) happening.
This 'feature' has doubtless cost users thousands of hours work, not least as it won't tell you exactly why it's not starting (or at least 1.3 via webmin doesn't, they may have fixed this in 2.x) or ask if you want to create the directory or any other useful response.
But... if you ask it to serve webpages from a non-existent directory, it'll start up happily, and not moan or give any hint as to what's (not) happening.
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Automation Is Us, aka. Why Should We Check Things If We Have A Computer That Can Check Things For Us
Date: 2005-12-14 01:49 pm (UTC)