Odd Apache dependencies

So, today I've been doing one of those things one does after coming back from a long vacation: running aptitude upgrade on various boxes. I'd already been testing the Apache 2.2 migration on one system before I left so that I could test my own modules, and now the other modules I wanted to use are available and everything looks good. So I migrated another web server, figuring everything would be fine.

Afterwards, all of Apache's children started constantly segfaulting and respawning.

I went through disabling modules, turning things off, until I had a stripped down server and it was still happening. All the children were dying so fast that I couldn't easily get an strace on any one. Finally, I stopped Apache entirely and restarted the whole thing under strace -f, to discover that it was segfaulting shortly after calling some epoll function and getting ENOSYS.

Nice error handling, guys.

So, apparently Apache 2.2, at least as built by Debian, requires a 2.6 kernel. This isn't horribly surprising since etch isn't going to support 2.4, but I'd been putting off switching to a distribution kernel on that system instead of the one I built myself. This was the kick in the pants required, so now it's running 2.6, Apache 2.2 is happy, and I'm sure a whole pile of local root vulnerabilities I don't really care about are now all fixed.

Maybe this will save someone else some time debugging.