Httpd constantly respawning

Question

I have 10.5.1 installed on a Xserve G5 and have two web sites up and running on it. In the syslog I see the httpd server process respawning constantly:
Jan 3 10:40:05 healthcenter org.apache.httpd[47518]: (48)Address already in use: make_sock: could not bind to address 127.0.0.1:9010
Jan 3 10:40:05 healthcenter org.apache.httpd[47518]: no listening sockets available, shutting down
Jan 3 10:40:05 healthcenter org.apache.httpd[47518]: Unable to open logs
Jan 3 10:40:05 healthcenter com.apple.launchd[208] (org.apache.httpd[47518]): Exited with exit code: 1
Jan 3 10:40:05 healthcenter com.apple.launchd[208] (org.apache.httpd): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
It's been doing this non-stop for days now. Any ideas about what's going on? Anywhere else I can look for possible configuration errors?

Answer 1

The error message tells you what the problem is:
(48)Address already in use: make_sock: could not bind to address 127.0.0.1:9010
Some other process is already running on the port that Apache is trying to connect to (in this case, 9010).
That could be a rogue Apache process that was started inadvertently, or could be some other process altogether. Since it's not complaining about any other port, I'm going to guess that you have some other process running on port 9010.
You can find out which process is causing the problem via:
<pre class=command>sudo lsof -i :9010</pre>
Once you know the process, you can decide whether you need that process, whether you can move that process to another port number, or whether you need to change Apache to use a different port.