My Apache2 installation wasn't honoring the APACHE_RUN_* environment variables and therefore not treating directories or PHP pages as they should be, so I fiddled around with apt-get and tasksel for a while, shoving the apache2 package and the lamp-server task back and forth. After the first uninstallation, Apache stopped working altogether; I should have just tried hard-coding the variables in the first place, except then I might have gotten a bigger surprise later.
Anyhow, when my shoving was accomplishing nothing except the re-creation of four empty directories and one empty file (httpd.conf) in /etc/apache2, I decided to restart my system to get more diagnostic info for this thread. When I booted back up, the shell complained about problems with kinit; the command by that name isn't installed, so I'm clueless. But those problems crippled Gnome, and I took a crash-course in WeeChat and lynx (which was only useful for reading about WeeChat because it couldn't hold cookies or login).
I finally got someone on the Ubuntu IRC channel to state the obvious (and flattened my forehead a bit more): that I should reinstall the core Gnome components. I already had gnome-core, so I just installed gnome for good measure. One of those dependencies must have been the right one; when I rebooted, I was greeted by the GUI again.
I uninstalled all the packages listed at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ap...&redirect=LAMP and then installed the lamp-server task again. Now I'm in the same position as before I restarted; Apache can't start because apache2.conf doesn't exist, and even when it did exist something hidden was horribly wrong. Does anybody have a clue about what's going one?
Thanks!
Bookmarks