High Sierra Apache – Restart Causes Applications to React Weirdly

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I have macOS High Sierra running on my Mac, and it has worked fine until now. But today I experienced something very weird. I was trying to restart Apache (a web development server), and then my apps started reacting very weird. For example, I had Activity Monitor open, and then suddenly it crashed and when I tried to open it again, it either says "Activity Monitor is not open anymore." or just doesn't respond. And when I try to use Command Tab to switch to another app, it just gives me the sound that tells me that you cannot do that, and the same with Command Q and Command W. Not many of my apps are willing to open when I try to open them. After a while my keyboard even doesn't react when I type!

If I restart my computer, it is working fine in the start but when I try to restart Apache, it does all that crab again.

UPDATE: If I have an app that is not responding, lets say the Terminal, and I go to the menu bar and click Terminal > Quit Terminal, then suddenly the menu bar disappears.

What can I do to fix my computer?

Best Answer

I found a somewhat working solution.

I am using Homebrew's httpd package, so I found out that I could just reinstall it:

When it begins to do that weird stuff, restart the computer.
Then reinstall httpd with brew reinstall httpd
You're good!

EDIT:

I later found out that it was an issue with the MySQL server that was not running/having a problem.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Problems with apache after update of php and thesql using homebrew

OK, so I found the culprit.

It is amazing that no error message was visible in console or in the error logs, but I found a site which helped me a lot.

http://blog.joshdick.net/2012/07/28/troubleshooting_apache_in_os_x_10.8_mountain_lion.html

In that post, the author, Josh, suggested restarting apache using the following command:

sudo bash -x /usr/sbin/apachectl -k start

This command provides some error information, and overcomes the frustrating silent termination of Apache.

When I issued the command, it gave me the following output:

$ sudo bash -x /usr/sbin/apachectl -k start
+ ARGV='-k start'
+ HTTPD=/usr/sbin/httpd
+ test -f /usr/sbin/envvars
+ . /usr/sbin/envvars
++ DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib:
++ export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
+ LYNX='lynx -dump'
+ STATUSURL=http://localhost:80/server-status
+ ULIMIT_MAX_FILES=
+ LAUNCHCTL=/bin/launchctl
+ LAUNCHD_JOB=/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
+ '[' x '!=' x ']'
+ ERROR=0
+ '[' 'x-k start' = x ']'
+ case $ARGV in
+ /usr/sbin/httpd -k start
httpd: Syntax error on line 118 of /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf: Cannot load /usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.11/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so into server: dlopen(/usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.11/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so, 10): Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/zlib/lib/libz.so.1.2.7\n  Referenced from: /usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.11/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so\n  Reason: image not found
+ ERROR=1
+ exit 1

At the end of that snippet, you can see that it is trying and failing to load /usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.11/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Well, when I upgraded my homebrew installs, php5 was upgraded to 5.4.15, so that path was no longer valid. (Actually, the path was valid, since php was now at 5.4.15, and the path pointed to the older 5.4.11 lib, apache was terminating.

Modifying that line in https.conf solved the issue.

Apache goes to sleep on new OS X 10.9

I think the answer is "Stop pressing the Power Button".

I had read that tapping the power button in Mavericks would turn off the monitor. In fact this is wrong, it puts the machine to sleep.

It is a very light sleep because the machine will still respond to 'ssh' requests, and the moment one tries to ssh into the machine the httpd will magically wake up. But, if no one tries to ssh, the httpd daemon will stop responding a minute or so after one taps the power button.

I was sometimes tapping the power button to turn of the monitor. I have stopped doing that. So far so good.

More updates if this turns out to be the wrong answer.

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