apache2 reload fails after update to apache2-2.2.12-1.18.1

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 1

Situation

After applying the latest apache2 maintenance update (from apache-2.2.10 to apache2-2.2.12-1.18.1) reloading the service manually or scheduled via logrotate fails with:

[Tue Nov 08 10:10:08 2011] [notice] Graceful restart requested, doing restart
httpd2-prefork: Syntax error on line 116 of /etc/apache2/httpd.conf: Syntax error on line 22 of /etc/apache2/sysconfig.d/loadmodule.conf: Cannot load /usr/lib64/apache2-prefork/mod_include.so into
server: /usr/lib64/apache2-prefork/mod_include.so: undefined symbol: ap_escape_html2

in /var/log/apache2/error_log

Resolution

With apache-2.2.12 a new version and new libraries got installed which require the whole service to be restarted. As the reload command only reloads the configuration of the service, it fails to initialize the new libraries.

The solution is to use

rcapache2 restart

after the update to restart the service.

Please note: If the service does not get restarted after the update, logrotate may rotate the logs in /var/log/apache2 at some point and execute the reload by itself causing the service to fail.

The behavior of the package got addressed with apache2-2.2.12-1.30.1 and later.

Additional Information

As of SLE11 there is visual feedback if libraries got exchanged and if the service needs to be restarted. Please see the output below:

sles11test:~ # zypper up apache2
Refreshing service 'SMT-http_smt_test_site'.
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

The following package updates will NOT be installed:
 

The following packages are going to be upgraded:
  apache2 apache2-prefork

2 packages to upgrade.
Overall download size: 1.0 MiB. After the operation, additional 25.0 KiB will be used.
Continue? [y/n/?] (y):
Retrieving package apache2-prefork-2.2.12-1.18.1.x86_64 (1/2), 272.0 KiB (669.0 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving delta: ./rpm/x86_64/apache2-prefork-2.2.10_2.2.12-2.30.1_1.18.1.x86_64.delta.rpm, 127.0 KiB
Applying delta: ./apache2-prefork-2.2.10_2.2.12-2.30.1_1.18.1.x86_64.delta.rpm [done]
Installing: apache2-prefork-2.2.12-1.18.1 [done]
Retrieving package apache2-2.2.12-1.18.1.x86_64 (2/2), 753.0 KiB (2.3 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving delta: ./rpm/x86_64/apache2-2.2.10_2.2.12-2.30.1_1.18.1.x86_64.delta.rpm, 271.0 KiB
Applying delta: ./apache2-2.2.10_2.2.12-2.30.1_1.18.1.x86_64.delta.rpm [done]
Installing: apache2-2.2.12-1.18.1 [done]
Additional rpm output:
Starting SuSEconfig, the SuSE Configuration Tool...
Running module permissions only
Reading /etc/sysconfig and updating the system...
Executing /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.permissions...
Finished.
Updating etc/sysconfig/apache2...
looking for old 2.0 modules to be renamed...
Done.


There are some running programs that use files deleted by recent upgrade. You may wish to restart some of them. Run 'zypper ps' to list these programs.
sles11test:~ #

Running "zypper ps" will provide a list of processes that needs to be restarted due to changed libraries. In order to avoid any problems with changed libraries its highly recommended to restart the service as soon as the update was installed.

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