Apache2 fails to start with libapache2-mod-fcgid: No such file or directory: mod_fcgid

[Stephen]

When I upgraded to saucy, Apache2 failed to start with the full error in /var/log/apache2/error_log:

[Sun Jan 05 07:32:52.418401 2014] [fcgid:emerg] [pid 15690:tid 3074378304] (2)No such file or directory: mod_fcgid: Can't create shared memory for size 1167812 bytes

This appears to be because the configuration directive for SharememPath used by mod_fcgid is not set correctly in the configuration files. That variable needs to be set to a directory that is created and empty. Such a directory seems to exist: /var/lib/apache2/module/enabled_by_admin/fcgid

I was able to add this to my Apache configuration to solve the issue:

<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
  SharememPath /var/lib/apache2/module/enabled_by_admin/fcgid
</IfModule>

This SharememPath setting should be made by default in /etc/apache2/mods-available/fcgid.conf

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: libapache2-mod-fcgid 1:2.3.9-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-14.21-generic 3.11.7
Uname: Linux 3.11.0-14-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.2
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Jan 6 04:14:00 2014
Dependencies:
 gcc-4.8-base 4.8.1-10ubuntu9
 libc6 2.17-93ubuntu4
 libgcc1 1:4.8.1-10ubuntu9
 multiarch-support 2.17-93ubuntu4
InstallationDate: Installed on 2011-06-16 (935 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: libapache2-mod-fcgid
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2014-01-02 (3 days ago)

[Felix Geyer (debfx)]

SharememPath (aka FcgidProcessTableFile) defaults to /var/lib/apache2/fcgid/shm.
Does /var/lib/apache2/fcgid exist on your system and is owned by www-data?

[Stephen (1012web)]

shm does not exist in that location on my saucy system

$ ls -lah /var/lib/apache2/fcgid/
total 12K
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K Jan 5 16:04 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4.0K Jan 5 11:42 ..
drwx------ 2 www-data root 4.0K Jan 6 10:25 sock

[Stephen (1012web)]

I used apt to remove the apache module and re-install it. The directory does not get recreated by the installation.

$ sudo apt-get remove --purge libapache2-mod-fcgid
$ sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apache2/fcgid/
$ sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-fcgid
$ ls -lah /var/lib/apache2/fcgid/
total 12K
drwxr-xr-x 3 www-data www-data 4.0K Jan 6 12:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4.0K Jan 6 12:55 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 4.0K Oct 11 14:15 sock

[Stephen (1012web)]

I have a machine still running raring. The "shm" file exists on it. If I purge and re-install libapache2-mod-fcgid, the "shm" file does get re-created:

$ ls -lah /var/lib/apache2/fcgid/
total 32K
drwxr-xr-x 3 www-data root 4.0K Jan 6 02:03 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K Oct 31 2012 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 Jan 6 02:03 shm
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 20K Jan 6 10:29 sock

The creation of this directory must not be happening anymore during the installation of libapache2-mod-fcgid

[Stephen (1012web)]

I can confirm that the server starts fine with no configuration changes (I removed the workaround I had suggested earlier) when I create the file/ var/lib/apache2/fcgid/shm

$ sudo touch /var/lib/apache2/fcgid/shm
$ ls -lah /var/lib/apache2/fcgid/
total 16K
drwxr-xr-x 3 www-data www-data 4.0K Jan 6 13:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4.0K Jan 6 12:55 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 Jan 6 13:01 shm
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 4.0K Jan 6 13:02 sock

It is owned by root and has the same permissions as on my "raring" machine.

[Felix Geyer (debfx)]

Not sure what's going on there. I can't reproduce the problem.
/var/lib/apache2/fcgid/shm is not supposed to be created by the package but apache creates it on startup.

[Stephen (1012web)]

I think I see what the problem was. Based on one of my early comments the /var/lib/apache2/fcgid/ directory was owned by root so the file couldn't be created there by apache running as www-data

It looks like the permissions were reset when I purged and reinstalled the package. I can confirm that the shm file disappears when I stop apache2 and re-appears when I start it.

[janl (janl)]

Same problem on machine upgraded from 12.04.<last> to 14.04.

/var/lib/apache2/fcgid/ does not exist.
/var/lib/apache2 is owned by root

32633 open("/var/log/apache2/kqview-access.log", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_APPEND|O_CLOEXEC, 0666) = 13
32633 open("/var/lib/apache2/fcgid/shm", O_WRONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
32633 open("/var/lib/apache2/fcgid/shm", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_EXCL|O_CLOEXEC, 0666) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
32633 write(2, "[Fri May 02 12:21:17.679303 2014] [fcgid:emerg] [pid 32633:tid 139668710119296] (2)No such file or directory: mod_fcgid: Can't create shared memory for size 1200712 bytes\n", 171) = 171

....

<email address hidden># mkdir /var/lib/apache2/fcgid
<email address hidden># chown www-data:www-data /var/lib/apache2/fcgid
<email address hidden># /etc/init.d/apache2 start
 * Starting web server apache2 *
<email address hidden># ls -l /var/lib/apache2/fcgid
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8 mai 2 12:26 shm
drwx------ 2 www-data root 4096 mai 2 12:26 sock

[Dan Porter (stealthii)]

Ensure that the `slotmem_shm` module is loaded by Apache, and see if the problem still persists.

https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=52841#c1

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.