updating from 12.04 to 14.04 causes apache to not start

[Mario Limonciello]

Upgrading from 12.04 to 14.04 causes apache to not start:

 * Starting web server apache2 *
 * The apache2 configtest failed.
Output of config test was:
AH00526: Syntax error on line 30 of /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/mythweb.conf:
You may not use 'Options +All' or 'Options -All'.
Action 'configtest' failed.
The Apache error log may have more information.

This is because 12.04 had apache2 2.2. 14.04 has 2.4. The supported syntax changed between apache releases.

Fixed by:

$ sudo rm /etc/apache2/sites-available/mythweb.conf
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure mythweb
$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

I think during dist-upgrade we might want to either remove mythweb.conf so it can regenerate (easier/safer), or fix this in postinst for upgrade.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Carl (cdhunter2)]

The above didn't completely work for me. Since I had originally set up mythweb to not be the only web service I had to reconfigure mythweb twice. The first time to say mythweb would be the only web service running and the second to say it wouldn't.

I dug a little further and found that instead of reconfiguring mythweb I could do the following.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/mythweb.conf
Change any reference of /var/www/mythweb to /var/www/html/mythweb
sudo a2ensite 000-default.conf

The a2ensite command didn't seem to get run when I reconfigured mythweb and selected No for mythweb being the only web service. For some reason it had to be toggled to Yes and then back to No.

[neutron68 (neutron68)]

I performed the 12.04 to 14.04 upgrade this morning. I was getting the same reported symptoms (AH00526: Syntax error on line 30 of /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/mythweb.conf:)
The detailed fix did not work on my machine either.

When trying to start the apache2 server I got the following message:

AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message

[Thomas Mashos (tgm4883)]

We really do appreciate you opening this ticket to help improve Mythbuntu, but it needs to be closed for a number of reasons. The biggest one is that upstream has moved on to a new version and believes this to be fixed. Could you please verify if this issue still exists in the latest version?

Please do not let the closing of this ticket dissuade you from opening a new ticket if this (or any other) problem occurs with the newer versions.