Thanks for that detailed response Andy. Like you, I don't tend to alter
config files, but maybe I did something when I set up my server. All's
working well, that's the main thing.
Barry
On 5 October 2013 18:40, Andy Smith <andy@???> wrote:
> Hi Barry,
>
> On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 07:56:42PM +0100, Barry Watson wrote:
> > I got round to upgrading to Wheezy earlier. All went well but when I
> > restarted apache2 the restart failed with the message that it couldn't
> find
> > httpd.conf.
>
> The /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file as shipped by Debian squeeze
> includes this:
>
> # Include all the user configurations:
> Include /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
>
> and the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file as shipped by Debian squeeze
> merely contains:
>
> # This is here for backwards compatability reasons and to support
> # installing 3rd party modules directly via apxs2, rather than
> # through the /etc/apache2/mods-{available,enabled} mechanism.
> #
> #LoadModule mod_placeholder /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_placeholder.so
>
> i.e. nothing.
>
> > A search (using find) yielded no sign of httpd.conf so I guess I did
> > the right thing, but I'd just like to confirm that there is indeed no
> > httpd.conf in my VPS.
>
> The /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file is owned by the package
> apache2.2-common:
>
> $ dpkg -S /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
> apache2.2-common: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
>
> It is treated as a Conffile by this package:
>
> $ dpkg-query -W -f='${Conffiles}\n' apache2.2-common | grep
> 'apache2\.conf'
> /etc/apache2/apache2.conf 95c489c44ce638dca8c44be18ebc8353
>
> which means that, when you come to upgrade the apache2.2-common
> package, if your /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file is unmodified from
> what was shipped in the package then it will give you the new
> version of the file without asking.
>
> However if your file has been changed (e.g. by you configuring
> something in there) then it will instead ask you if you wish to have
> the new version, keep the old version, or take a few other actions
> like inspect a diff, etc.
>
> So, I suspect what happened is that your /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
> was previously modified by you, then you were asked if you wanted to
> replace it during upgrade but you said no, so you kept the version
> from Debian squeeze which refers to httpd.conf. Also that you have
> at some point deleted /etc/apache2/httpd.conf. Possibly the upgrade
> procedure deleted it if was never changed.
>
> If that suspicion is correct then you will probably have an
> /etc/apache2/apache2.conf.dpkg-dist lying about which would be the
> new file that it wanted to install.
>
> Some more info about Debian Conffile handling:
>
>
> http://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/21/debian-conffile-configuration-file-managed-by-dpkg/
>
> Personally where possible I find it worth going out of my way to
> avoid editing the Conffiles that .deb packages install, and instead
> putting my edits into separate files. Many packages have facilities
> for doing that. This reduces the number of decisions that need to be
> made during a package upgrade.
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
> --
> http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
>
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