Zend Server CE messing with Apache? - zend-framework

Question

I am starting with a clean install of Fedora 15 on a VirtualBox VM and trying to install Zend Server CE. To install, I adding the Zend repo to yum and ran:
sudo yum install zend-server-ce-php-5.3
The installation itself seemed to go very well. I opened the browser at http://localhost:10081/ZendServer as directed. After clicking through the license page and entering an administative password I get the error:
Failed to access Web server. Please make sure that the Web server is running and listening to the correct port
The Applications, Rules Management and Administration tabs function properly but the Monitor and Server Setup tabs both display the above error. It is a fact that the web server is not running, but when I try to rectify that I get another error:
$ sudo service httpd start
[sudo] Password for XXXXX:
Starting httpd (via systemctl): Job failed. See system logs and 'systemctl status' for details.
[FAILED]
For what it's worth (not much, I'm guessing) here are the details the message refers to:
$ sudo tail /var/log/messages
....
Jan 17 17:24:18 M5 systemd[1]: httpd.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
Jan 17 17:24:18 M5 systemd[1]: Unit httpd.service entered failed state.
$ systemctl status httpd.service
httpd.service - LSB: start and stop Apache HTTP Server
Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd)
Active: failed since Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:24:18 -0500; 3min 44s ago
Process: 19500 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
CGroup: name=systemd:/system/httpd.service
The diagnostics don't seem very helpful. I've tried various things, such as installing and starting httpd before installing Zend Server CE, reinstalling httpd (no good: unistalling it caused Zend to uninstall too). The httpd config isn't causing the problem as the following output demonstrates:
$ /usr/sbin/apachectl configtest
Syntax OK
Is this a know problem? What's my next move? Do I start putting debug statements in the control script to see what's failing? I can do that, but I'm hoping someone out there has dealt with this problem and can give me a quick solution.

Answer 1

I was able to get better information on the cause of the problem by invoking the apachectl script directly rather than using the service:
$ sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl start
httpd: Syntax error on line 220 of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf: Syntax error on line 6 of /etc/httpd/conf.d/zendserver_php.conf: Cannot load /usr/local/zend/lib/apache2/libphp5.so into server: /usr/local/zend/lib/apache2/libphp5.so: cannot enable executable stack as shared object requires: Permission denied
The syntax check on httpd.conf didn't catch this because it's not really a syntax error and it's not in httpd.conf either, but in the included zendserver_php.conf. A quick search shows that this error is the result of libphp5.so violating one of the constraints that SELinux enforces. SELinux is enabled by default in Fedora 15.
I don't like to reduce security, but that the only way I've seen this issue addressed. So I disabled SELinux temporarily with the command
$ sudo setenforce 0
I also edited /etc/selinux/config and changed SELINUX=enforced to SELINUX=disabled so SELinux would stay disabled on reboot. Now my web server starts without a hitch:
[mike#M5 ~]$ sudo service httpd start
Starting httpd (via systemctl): [ OK ]
I would like to think someone in the Zend development community is working on this shared library issue. Reducing security is not an acceptable work-around in a lot of cases. If anybody has a better solution, I'd still like to know it.