Apache2 Syntax error, can't access 000-default

Question

I have been using Apache2 and Webmin with my Raspberry Pi. After a restart and reinstallations Apache won't start.

> sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
apache2: Syntax error on line 268 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Could not open configuration file /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default: No such file or directory
Action 'configtest' failed.
The Apache error log may have more information.
failed!

The file 000-default is there and unopenable permissions to root-root. My apache2.conf file looks like this (bottom half):

# ErrorLog: The location of the error log file.
# If you do not specify an ErrorLog directive within a <VirtualHost>
# container, error messages relating to that virtual host will be
# logged here.  If you *do* define an error logfile for a <VirtualHost>
# container, that host's errors will be logged there and not here.
#
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

#
# LogLevel: Control the number of messages logged to the error_log.
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
#
LogLevel debug

# Include module configuration:
Include mods-enabled/*.load
Include mods-enabled/*.conf

# Include list of ports to listen on and which to use for name based vhosts
Include ports.conf

#
# The following directives define some format nicknames for use with
# a CustomLog directive (see below).
# If you are behind a reverse proxy, you might want to change %h into %{X-Forwarded-For}i
#
LogFormat "%v:%p %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" vhost_combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O" common
LogFormat "%{Referer}i -> %U" referer
LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent

# Include of directories ignores editors' and dpkg's backup files,
# see the comments above for details.

# Include generic snippets of statements
Include conf.d/

# Include the virtual host configurations:
Include sites-enabled/
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory /var/www>
allow from all
Options +Indexes
</Directory>
ServerName IMASERVER
</VirtualHost>

Does anyone know what is the cause of this?

Answer 1

Firstly, having VirtualHost(s) inside the config file is a bad move, (I'm not even sure it's possible) the whole idea of sites-enabled is to have your VirtualHosts in different files in that folder, and simply use

a2ensite default
a2dissite 000-default

With this said, you can try remove the VirtualHost-block in your config file and make (or edit) the default file in sites-enabled. Make sure you restart apache.

I assume the file you posted is /<some-dir>/apache2/apache2.conf

However, the file you posted above doesn't look anything like the config files I've seen for apache. Can't help you on that one.