Failed to start Lighttpd Daemon

Question

Tried starting Lighttpd after editing it:

@raspberrypi:/etc/lighttpd/ssl $ systemctl status lighttpd.service
● lighttpd.service - Lighttpd Daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/lighttpd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2023-01-10 14:36:35 CET; 11s ago
    Process: 17057 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/lighttpd -tt -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf (code=exited, status=255/EXCEPTION)
        CPU: 60ms

Jan 10 14:36:35 raspberrypi systemd[1]: lighttpd.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 5.
Jan 10 14:36:35 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Stopped Lighttpd Daemon.
Jan 10 14:36:35 raspberrypi systemd[1]: lighttpd.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Jan 10 14:36:35 raspberrypi systemd[1]: lighttpd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jan 10 14:36:35 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Failed to start Lighttpd Daemon.

And here is what I edited in the conf file:

$SERVER ["socket"] == ":443" {
        ssl.engine = "enable"
        ssl.pemfile = "/etc/lighttpd/ssl/buildinggroup6.local.pem"
      # ssl.ca-file = "/etc/lighttpd/ssl/CA_issuing.crt"
        server.name = "group6.local"
        server.document-root = "/sites/vhosts/group6.local/public"
        server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/group6.local.error.log"
        accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/group6.local.access.log"
}

I have tried nothing, it was supposed to start and after editing it give me a ssl certificate for my web server.

Answer 1

Manually run the ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/lighttpd -tt -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf step on the command line and look at the errors. systemd tends to hide useful information in noise.

Run this manually: /usr/sbin/lighttpd -tt -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf and fix the configuration errors reported by lighttpd.

My guess is that you specified ssl.pemfile but that you also need to specify ssl.privkey with the path to the private key for the TLS certificate.