Bug#500558: apache2.2-common: Apache fails to start on boot after upgrade Etch -> Lenny

[Simon Brady <simon@hikari.org.nz>]

I've hit the same error on a clean install of lenny with 
apache2.2-common-2.2.9-10+lenny8. The problem started when I changed the 
Listen directive in /etc/apache2/ports.conf from

Listen 80

to

Listen 127.0.1.1:80

(The host is behind a DSL router, but I specifically don't want Apache 
listening on eth0 because that same router has a Windows laptop 
connected to it and, well, you can guess the rest...)

The problem occurs consistently at boot but after boot I can start 
Apache fine with an explicit "/etc/init.d/apache2 start". The IPv4 part 
of my /etc/hosts looks like this:

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       saitama.hikari.org.nz   saitama

and my /etc/network/interfaces contains:

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

The boot-time error goes away if I change "allow-hotplug eth0" to "auto 
eth0", which forces eth0 to acquire an IPv4 address before Apache 
starts. But lo already auto-starts on 127.0.0.0/8, so I don't understand 
why the modified Listen directive fails when eth0 is down.

Hope this helps,
Simon