Apache SSL won't start correctly

[Mr Neil Wilson]

Hello all,

We had a system crash while Apache (version 2.0.46 on 11i)was running using SSL and now it won't start up correctly. I run the command (from bin) './apachectl startssl' and enter the password correctly and it's happy and you think all is ok but i can't get a page from my browser (Not even the index page). I do a ps -ef |grep apache and there's only one running and i get the following error in the error_log :

[Tue Dec 09 12:54:15 2003] [error] Cannot allocate shared memory: (17)File exist
s

What i'm expecting to see in here is the following :

[Mon Aug 11 14:19:47 2003] [notice] HP-UX_Apache-based_Web_Server configured --
resuming normal operations

When Apache is started without SSL it starts numerous processes and i can get a page ok,works fine.

As a newbie to Apache, everything i've tried hasn't worked, so any assistance would be appreciated.

Many Thanks,
Neil.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shared memory issues is where this seems to begin.

Is there enough shared memory set up in the kernel?

File exists. Take a look at the startup script. There is probably a lock file that gets created that would include the pid(proccess id) of the ssl process. This file may have been created previously and have incorrect permissions on it.

Also see what user owns the binaries and make sure that user is starting the daemon. Usually thats root, but it doesn't have to be.

SEP

[John Collier · Accepted solution]

Neil,

I'm pretty sure that SEP is on the right track here.

If memory serves me correctly, the main culprit in this will be one of those lock files. On normal startup of Apache, there a numerous files created and several of those are lock files. When you shut the server down gracefully, it will remove the files that need to be removed and rebuild them on next start up.

Since you didn't shut down gracefully, there is some left over files from the last init. Memory doesn't pull up the most likely file name right this moment, but I will do some looking around and see if I can find the list of the most likely culprits.

When I do, I will send them back up here (unless someone else beats me to the punch).

Regards,
John

[Mr Neil Wilson]

Thanks to both of you, as it pointed us in the right direction and we found that there was a file in the logs directory called ssl_scache which gets created along with the httpd.pid when starting Apache with SSL.
Deleted this file and started Apache ok.

Many Thanks,
Neil.

[John Rush]

Just a postscript to this .. we get this a lot under heavy load. We have found that you need to use ipcs and ipcrm to get rid of the references.