This week we have a post about troubleshooting an Apache Linux Agent that fails to start with a ‘cannot load libsmerrlog.so’ error. As always, we present the reported issue, what we found during troubleshooting, and how the problem was remedied.
| Issue | Apache Linux Agent fails to start and generates a ‘cannot load libsmerrlog.so’ error. |
| Symptoms | Apache fails to start after a reboot or server power up. After the initialization failure, the client used the following command to identify the issue: journalctl -xe. The command returned the following error: httpd: Syntax error on line 66 of /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf: Cannot load /opt/CA/webagent/bin/libmod_sm24.so into server: libsmerrlog.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory |
| Troubleshooting | We asked the client to attempt starting Apache at the command prompt with the following command: ./apachectl start This returned the same error as the journalctl command that was used earlier. We then asked the client to load the web agent environment variables using the following commands and reattempt the start: source ca_wa_env.sh ./apachectl start After sourcing the web agent environment variables, Apache started correctly and the customer was able to verify that the agent was running with the following command: ps -ef | grep LLAWP |
| Condition | The client manually sourced the environment variable script to configure the agent. After the configuration, the client successfully started the web server. As a result, the client thought that the installation and configuration was successful. Additionally, this led them to believe that the problem only occurred when the server was restarted. |
| Cause | The web agent environment variables were not in the Apache envvars file. |
| Remedy | Edited the envvars (in the Apache bin directory) to include the following line at the beginning of the file: source /opt/CA/webagent/ca_wa_env.sh After editing the ennvars file, Apache started as expected with the apachectl command. Apache started as expected after a server reboot as well. |
As always, we hope that you have found this information useful. If you need IAM assistance, reach out to SIS today and we would be happy to assist you. And subscribe to our newsletter to be notified about the posting of future articles and other SIS news.
