hardwiring the semaphores directory, revisited

After looking at the source code, I realized that the
problem I described in my previous post is related to
the FAQ entry titled:

"Apache creates files in a directory declared by the internal
EAPI_MM_CORE_PATH define. ..."

The FAQ entry doesn't mention semaphores or the error
message a badly-defined EAPI_MM_CORE_PATH can cause,
so I missed it on my initial troubleshooting of this
problem.

I think it would be useful to add a couple of sentences to this
entry, something like:

If you don't have permissions to write to the directory
pointed by EAPI_MM_CORE_PATH, httpd may fail on startup
with an error message similar to this:

Ouch! ap_mm_create(1048576, "/opt/apache/logs/httpd.mm.25669") failed
Error: MM: mm:core: failed to open semaphore file (Permission
denied): OS: No such file or directory

This could help people doing a textual search for the error
message. Does this make sense?

Thanks,

Hernan

--
--
Hernan Laffitte
Systems Administrator, HP Labs / Storage Systems Department
http://www.hpl.hp.com
hernan@hpl.hp.com
tel (650)857-4937 fax (650)857-5548
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Re: hardwiring the semaphores directory, revisited

Error messages in software have always sucked, programmers see to never
really think of end users when designating them in their coding, when they
are designated and not left to the OS to obfuscate. FAQ's and
documentation should include as much error code info as possible to help
guide these matters as endusers encounter them.


Thanks,

Ron DuFresne

On Wed, 11 Dec 2002, Hernan Laffitte wrote:

> After looking at the source code, I realized that the
> problem I described in my previous post is related to
> the FAQ entry titled:
>
> "Apache creates files in a directory declared by the internal
> EAPI_MM_CORE_PATH define. ..."
>
> The FAQ entry doesn't mention semaphores or the error
> message a badly-defined EAPI_MM_CORE_PATH can cause,
> so I missed it on my initial troubleshooting of this
> problem.
>
> I think it would be useful to add a couple of sentences to this
> entry, something like:
>
> If you don't have permissions to write to the directory
> pointed by EAPI_MM_CORE_PATH, httpd may fail on startup
> with an error message similar to this:
>
> Ouch! ap_mm_create(1048576, "/opt/apache/logs/httpd.mm.25669") failed
> Error: MM: mm:core: failed to open semaphore file (Permission
> denied): OS: No such file or directory
>
> This could help people doing a textual search for the error
> message. Does this make sense?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Hernan
>
>

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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