Test Apache configuration syntax

Recently my Mac OS X stock install of Apache failed to launch properly. The regular system preferences interface stopped and started Web Sharing without complaining, but I could not find httpd actually running using ps -ax | grep httpd in the terminal.

I was at a loss to explain why, until I found this little gem that you can use to syntax-test your configuration files with: apachectl -t will report on any errors in httpd.conf or any of your other included files.

It appeared that some time ago when I was attempting a manual upgrade of my Subversion install to 1.6.9 some Apache modules were corrupted. As I have no use for them I disabled them.

That did the trick, and now I’ve got my local development environment up and running again.