Outage

So my server was offline from 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon until about 6 this morning.  I needed to make a little change to the Apache configuration, but when I restarted Apache, PHP started crying about missing modules.  I hate PHP so much.  None of my changes had anything to do with PHP, and Apache had been running for a few months with no changes whatsoever.  But the server wouldn’t start because of the PHP errors.

I went through a bunch of ridiculous Debian nonsense, apt-getting apache, php, lots of dependencies, lots of updated stuff, none of which made any difference whatsoever.  I wasted hours with it.  Finally I got fed up and deleted anything that Debian had touched related to Apache or PHP, then manually built and installed Apache and PHP from source, and it was up in no time.  Ugh.