[SOLVED] Ubuntu 20.04 Apache wont start

Hi All
I recently migrated ISPConfig from my self-hosted server to a VPS using the Migration Tool. After some teething issues and many re-installs and re-migrations I managed to get everything running. All the websites I migrated are running WordPress.

I had a second self-hosted server running a company website which is basically a PHP front end for a MySQL database - so I decided I would like to get this migrated into ISPConfig so I only need to pay for one VPS... After a lot of fiddling about I managed to get it migrated and working correctly. Then within a few minutes of finally getting it working I set the site as unactive from the Sites section to make sure that the GUI I was looking at was the site hosted on ISPConfig and not the production site... as expected it disappeared, so I set it back to active expecting to see it reappear and it never came back. So I tried to log into the ISPConfig GUI and it too is missing... as are all the websites hosted on the VPS.

I connected to the server and found Apache is failing to start, even rebooting and trying to restart the service has no effect.
The only clue I have managed to find is;

AH00526: Syntax error on line 61 of /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/100-mywebsite.co.uk.vhost:
Invalid command 'php_admin_value', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration​

Line 61 of /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/100-mywebsite.co.uk.vhost reads;

php_admin_value sendmail_path "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i [email protected]"​

* I have replaced the domain name with 'mywebsite.co.uk' above!

The only way forward I can think of is to recreate my VPS and start from scratch migrating everything again, which will take several hours - so can anyone offer any advice how to remedy this?

The only difference I can think of with this website is that i have set PHP to mod-php as the original site is pretty old (2013) and shows the Server API as Apache 2.0 Handler and I am not sure if it will run with Fast-CGI or PHP-FPM... but if the server hadn't crashed I was going to try Fast-CGI.

Any thoughts before I trash and start again?

Thanks

 

Disable the 100-mywebsite.co.uk.vhost website. Then apache starts again and you can access ISPConfig Panel.

Code:

a2dissite mywebsite.co.uk

Then you can examine why that site fails, perhaps you have modified the .vhost file?

 

Thanks @Taleman

Thanks, I tried;

Code:

a2dissite mywebsite.co.uk

And

Code:

a2dissite 100-mywebsite.co.uk

But both come back with

Code:

Site mywebsite.co.uk does not exist!

Code:

Site 100-mywebsite.co.uk does not exist!

I haven't manually made any changes to the .vhost file - apart from the installation, after which it was working fine, all changes have been made in ISPConfig - disabling then re-enabling were the last two changes I made within ISPConfig before the whole server died!

I also ran some more tests;

Code:

apache2 -S

Which came back with;

Code:

[Wed Jan 11 07:58:41.545535 2023] [core:warn] [pid 25040] AH00111: Config variable ${APACHE_RUN_DIR} is not defined
apache2: Syntax error on line 80 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: DefaultRuntimeDir must be a valid directory, absolute or relative to ServerRoot

Line 80;

Code:

DefaultRuntimeDir ${APACHE_RUN_DIR}

Not that it should make a difference, but the mywebsite is actually mywebsite.me.uk not .co.uk!

Any thoughts on what to try now?

 

Thanks @till (again ) - but the instructions from @Taleman didn't work for me - see above post... are you able to advise another way to disable mywebsite.me.uk?

Also - as a feature request - if mod_php isnt supported, should it be removed as an option from ISPConfig?

Many thanks again

 

Thanks - this worked and its back online now.

Odd as I don't remember enabling anything in settings... but will remember this for sure going forward.

Many thanks for the fast responses ;-)