CentOS 6 Httpd failed to start

Question

I am using CentOS 6.5. The Apache HTTP server (httpd) is dead for an unknown reason. I cannot visit http://localhost/ anymore. When I tried to restart httpd, it failed (Error message shown below).

==================================================================

Error message when running sudo service httpd restart

Stopping httpd:                                            [FAILED]
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]

Error message stored in /var/log/httpd/error_log

[Tue Feb 04 14:44:57 2014] [notice] suEXEC mechanism enabled (wrapper: /usr/sbin/suexec)
[Tue Feb 04 14:44:57 2014] [notice] Digest: generating secret for digest authentication ...
[Tue Feb 04 14:44:57 2014] [notice] Digest: done
*** glibc detected *** /usr/sbin/httpd: free(): invalid pointer: 0x00007f74adda42c0 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib64/libc.so.6(+0x76166)[0x7f74bea04166]
/usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6(_ZNSs6assignERKSs+0x85)[0x7f74adb4e565]
/usr/lib64/libkolabxml.so.0(_ZN3xsd3cxx4tree19type_serializer_mapIcE13register_typeERKSt9type_infoRKNS0_3xml14qualified_nameIcEEPFvRN11xercesc_3_010DOMElementERKNS1_5_typeEEb+0x180)[0x7f74a2a73a70]
/usr/lib64/libkolabxml.so.0(_ZN3xsd3cxx4tree19type_serializer_mapIcEC1Ev+0xd2)[0x7f74a2a80232]
/usr/lib64/libkolabxml.so.0(+0x2145be)[0x7f74a2b035be]
/usr/lib64/libkolabxml.so.0(+0x21c766)[0x7f74a2b0b766]
======= Memory map: ========
7f74a1f2d000-7f74a1f38000 r-xp 00000000 fd:00 1874878                    /usr/lib64/libossp-uuid.so.16.0.21
TRUNCATED DUE TO CHARACTER LIMIT

Thank you for your time and help.

Solution

Seems to be a bug in the executable. Which may be caused by a corruption in your filesystem.

Backup your data, purge Apache from your system, and reinstall it.

And fsck the filesystem where your binary is.

Keep an eye on your SMART for that disk.

Comments

[Skyline]

It turned out to be a bug/error in the php package. I reinstalled it using yum erase php php-* followed by yum install php php-*. How the error occurred initially is unknown. Perhaps it is caused by a corruption in the fire system.