CentOS 7 apachectl httpd.service fails to start

Question

I'm building https://github.com/devopsgroup-io/catapult-release-management and every once in a while trying to apachectl start an error of:

Job for httpd.service failed. See 'systemctl status httpd.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.

systemctl status httpd.service outputs:

httpd.service - The Apache HTTP Server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service; enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2015-07-15 19:25:23 EDT; 4s ago
  Process: 3247 ExecStop=/bin/kill -WINCH ${MAINPID} (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
  Process: 3246 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/httpd $OPTIONS -DFOREGROUND (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
 Main PID: 3246 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat systemd[1]: httpd.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat kill[3247]: kill: cannot find process ""
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat systemd[1]: httpd.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat systemd[1]: Failed to start The Apache HTTP Server.
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat systemd[1]: Unit httpd.service entered failed state.

and journalctl -xn outputs:

-- Logs begin at Wed 2015-07-15 19:23:53 EDT, end at Wed 2015-07-15 19:25:23 EDT. --
Jul 15 19:25:11 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat sshd[3196]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user vagrant by (uid=0)
Jul 15 19:25:17 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat sudo[3221]: vagrant : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/vagrant ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/su -l
Jul 15 19:25:17 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat su[3222]: (to root) vagrant on pts/0
Jul 15 19:25:17 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat su[3222]: pam_unix(su-l:session): session opened for user root by vagrant(uid=0)
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
-- Subject: Unit httpd.service has begun with start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
-- 
-- Unit httpd.service has begun starting up.
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat systemd[1]: httpd.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat kill[3247]: kill: cannot find process ""
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat systemd[1]: httpd.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat systemd[1]: Failed to start The Apache HTTP Server.
-- Subject: Unit httpd.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
-- 
-- Unit httpd.service has failed.
-- 
-- The result is failed.
Jul 15 19:25:23 devopsgroup.io-dev-redhat systemd[1]: Unit httpd.service entered failed state.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

This was due to /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf being appended with more than 20 duplicate lines of IncludeOptional sites-enabled/*.conf

This is a bug in apachectl configtest as it reports correct configuration and does not provide a traceable error.