B.9 Address Already in Use

If, when attempting to start your Apache server, you get the following error message:

[Thu May 15 01:23:40 2003] [crit] (98)Address already in use: make_sock: could not 
bind to port 80

One of three things is happening:

• You are attempting to start the server as a nonroot user. Become the root user and try again.

• There is already some process running (perhaps another Apache server) using port 80. Run netstat, or perhaps look at the process list and kill any process that seems to fill this role.

• You have more than one Listen directive in your configuration file pointing to the same port number. Find the offending duplicate directive and remove it.

In the case of the first condition, you will need to become the root user in order to start Apache. By long tradition, only the root user may bind to any port lower than 1025. Since Apache typically runs on port 80, this requires root privileges.

The second condition can be a little trickier. Sometimes a child process will refuse to die and will remain running after Apache has been shut down. There are numerous reasons this might happen. Most of the time, you can kill this process forcibly using kill or kill -9 while logged in as root. As long as this process is running and has the port occupied, you will be unable to start anything else wanting to bind to that same port.

In the case of the third condition, the second Listen directive attempts to bind to port 80, which has already been taken by the first Listen directive. Simply removing one of the Listen directives will clear up this problem.