Very Simple circle.yml fails to start Apache

Build Environment
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1

I am new to CircleCI. I’ve tried almost 30 different builds to get something, anything to work, and whittled down the a very simple circle.yml and still getting failure. The last circle.yml I tried is:

machine:
  timezone:
    America/New_York

  php:
    version: 5.6.22

dependencies:
  post:
    - sudo service apache2 restart

test:
  override:
    - echo 'No tests, just say us Okay!'

The command and subsequent error message follows, and I used SSH to debug and the /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so file was definitely there (as a symlink). I even tried chowning it to www-data:www-data but that did not help either:

$ sudo service apache2 restart
 * Restarting web server apache2
   ...fail!
 * The apache2 configtest failed.
Output of config test was:
apache2: Syntax error on line 140 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Syntax error on line 1 of /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.load: Cannot load /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so into server: /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Action 'configtest' failed.
The Apache error log may have more information.
sudo service apache2 restart returned exit code 1
Action failed: sudo service apache2 restart

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

2

So it seems that a simply misconfiguration on CircleCI’s part sent me down a rabbit hole for hours. :frowning:

I eventually found the answer here.

Seems that /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so was symlinked to the wrong directory /home/ubuntu/.phpenv instead of the correct directory /opt/circleci/.phpenv.

The full path to symlink to should be "${PHPENV_ROOT}/versions/$(phpenv global)/usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so" where ${PHPENV_ROOT} provides "/opt/circleci/.phpenv" and $(phpenv global) provides the PHP version number, such as "5.6.22".

This is what I had to add to my circle.yml file to finally get it to work:

dependencies:
  pre:
    - sudo unlink "/usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so"
    - sudo ln -s "${PHPENV_ROOT}/versions/$(phpenv global)/usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so" "/usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so"

This is a serious landmine for wasting time, and it makes my first user experience of CircleCI less than positive. I hope the rest of CircleCI is not filled with other gotchas or I will wish I had chosen a different platform.