httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName

If you don't have httpd.conf in folder /etc/apache2, you should have apache2.conf - simply add:

ServerName localhost

Then restart the apache2 service.


Your hosts file does not include a valid FQDN, nor is localhost an FQDN. An FQDN must include a hostname part, as well as a domain name part. For example, the following is a valid FQDN:

host.server4-245.com

Choose an FQDN and include it both in your /etc/hosts file on both the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses you are using (in your case, localhost or 127.0.0.1), and change your ServerName in your httpd configuration to match.

/etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1    localhost.localdomain localhost host.server4-245.com
::1          localhost.localdomain localhost host.server4-245.com

httpd.conf:

ServerName host.server4-245.com

After the initial install of Apache server, I got the following error while restarting the Apache service on Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin)

The solution is really simple. Just add the ServerName directive to /etc/apache2/httpd.conf:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Add: ServerName localhost

Finally restart the Apache server:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart