Apache 2.4 Virtualhost Blank Screen

Question

I've recently moved a PHP project I'm working on to a VM running Apache 2.4.9 from a physical box running Apache 2.2.11. I have setup a VirtualHost for the project similar to what I had on the 2.2 box. I know there are differences between 2.2 and 2.4, which I'm pretty sure I've addressed in my 2.4 Virtualhost config, but I seem to be missing something.

When I point my browser to the URL of my VM for my project VirtualHost (http://project.dev.lan, in this case), all I get it a blank (white) screen. I have another VirtualHost setup for the default Document root and it seems to be working just fine; the page comes up as expected.

Can someone help steer me in the right direction?

apachectl -S returns:

VirtualHost configuration:
*:80                   is a NameVirtualHost
         default server localhost (/usr/local/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf:40)
         port 80 namevhost localhost (/usr/local/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf:40)
                 alias 192.168.0.130
         port 80 namevhost project.dev.lan (/usr/local/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf:46)
                 alias project.dev.vm
ServerRoot: "/usr/local/apache2"
Main DocumentRoot: "/data/www/apache2:80"
Main ErrorLog: "/var/log/apache2/error_log"
Mutex rewrite-map: using_defaults
Mutex proxy: using_defaults
Mutex default: dir="/usr/local/apache2/logs/" mechanism=default 
Mutex mpm-accept: using_defaults
Mutex proxy-balancer-shm: using_defaults
PidFile: "/usr/local/apache2/logs/httpd.pid"
Define: DUMP_VHOSTS
Define: DUMP_RUN_CFG
User: name="apache2" id=2000
Group: name="www" id=103

My VirtualHost file contains:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName      localhost
        ServerAlias     192.168.0.130
        DocumentRoot    /data/www/apache2:80
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName      project.dev.lan
        ServerAlias     project.dev.vm
        DocumentRoot    /data/www/project/SRC
        DirectoryIndex  index.php index.html
        ServerAdmin     [email protected]
        ErrorLog        /var/log/apache2/project.dev.lan-error_log
        CustomLog       /var/log/apache2/project.dev.lan-access_log common

        <Directory "/data/www/project/SRC">
                Options         +Indexes +Multiviews +FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride   All
                Require         all granted
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

I can post my httpd.conf if necessary, though I haven't changed much from the default beyond ensuring that my extra/httpd-vhosts.conf file has been included.

Can anyone shed some light on what I'm missing?

Thanks

Solution

if you get blank pages on loading php pages, set display_errors = On in /path-to-your/php.ini and start apache again (e.g.: sudo service apache24 onerestart). This way instead of a blank page, the missing extension(s) will be shown on the page. Chances are that it is commented out or missing in /path-to-your/php/extensions.ini (read on a FreeBSD forum, tip from soulreaver1)

Comments

[ravi yarlagadda]

Anything in Apache's error log?

[skubik]

No, nothing that would indicate a problem.

[ravi yarlagadda]

What HTTP headers are you getting on the blank page response?

[skubik]

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:26:44 GMT Server: Apache/2.4.9 (Unix) PHP/5.4.29 x-powered-by: PHP/5.4.29 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 0 Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: text/html

[skubik]

Just grabbed it from Firebug. Sorry for the lack of formatting. I suppose it's possible it's a PHP thing, but I'd assume I'd be getting something in the logs if it was. Usually when I get a blank screen like this, it's a syntax error, but again, it usually says something in my logs.

[ravi yarlagadda]

Looks like the PHP hander is generating the content, so that's where we should be looking. Do you know what the config looks like for your PHP handling?

[skubik]

Turns out I didn't have a php.ini set that Apache was able to load, so I copied the php.ini-development file from the PHP source into the appropriate spot and restarted Apache. phpinfo() now shows that it is loading php.ini but there's no change to the problem. I am, however, getting PHP errors in my Apache error log files, though it seems to be all PHP Warnings, Notices and 'Strict Standards', but nothing that would appear to cause my PHP scripts to fail like they are. I did add another PHP file with a simple echo and it worked fine on that virtualhost. What else should I look for?

[telcoM]

Is the current /data/www/project/SRC/index.* file OK? I might try temporarily replacing it with something simpler and verifying that it works. Then replacing it with something that calls phpinfo() and verifying that the PHP environment within the virtual host is as expected.