Apache commands failing with: AH00141: Could not initialize random number generator
According to this Debian bug report, it looks like Apache expects a kernel function to be there, that isn't necessarily there with every kernel:
The issue is that if the library is configured (at build time) to USE_GETRANDOM, then it assumes that the getrandom() call will be available and if it fails it becomes a fatal error. On my system, I don't have getrandom() because I'm running an ancient kernel, but others could (more legitimately) have the option disabled on a recent custom-built kernel.
The best solution would probably be to update to a more recent version of Ubuntu. Ubuntu 16.04 is more than five years or ten release cycles old and will lose support in less than a month. Or as the maintainer of the mentioned PPA put it:
With the experience of Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty EOL, I can't stress enough that you should plan ahead and have your servers already upgraded by now. Yesterday was too late.
I'd like to thank @Liam Morland for his answer above which led me to rectify this issue after an ill-advised apt-get update on Ubuntu 16.04. For those who might find it useful, here's exactly what I did:
-
Checked the log for apt-get to see exactly what software had been upgraded in the last round, and therefore what needed downgrading.
sudo tail /var/log/apt/history.log -
Searched through the data there to ascertain what varies of libapr1 and libutil1 I had installed. I ascertained that for me it was:
- libapr1
- libaprutil1
- libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
- libaprutil1-ldap
Your system may vary!
-
Installed aptitude (
sudo apt-get install aptitude). It is incredibly useful and gave me guidance on how to fix the dependencies, whereas apt-get gave me gibberish when I tried to downgrade. -
Using the command
sudo aptitude versions libapr1sudo aptitude versions libaprutil1I noted the exact version numbers that aptitude could supply. In my case, the version of libaprutil1 couldn't just be 1.5.4, it had to be 1.5.4-1build1. -
Using the = sign to specify version, I ran
sudo aptitude install libapr1=1.5.2-3. Aptitude then gave me a list of other software which would have been downgraded or stop working if I proceeded. I quit the install process, and using the error, crafted a single command to downgrade all the software that aptitude had identified. This was mine:
sudo aptitude install libapr1=1.5.2-3 libaprutil1=1.5.4-1build1 libaprutil1-ldap=1.5.4-1build1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3=1.5.4-1build1 apache2=2.4.18-2ubuntu3.17 apache2-bin=2.4.18-2ubuntu3.17 apache2-data=2.4.18-2ubuntu3.17
This was based on my specific installation, so please check what you have before running this command.
- I gave Apache a restart and everything was working fine again!
I hope this helps anyone else on the road.