LinuxHostingSupport

If Apache2 service fails to start with a “libphp5.so: cannot open shared object file” message, it indicates that libphp5.so is missing on your Ubuntu server.

Apache2 has detected a syntax error in your configuration files:
Syntax error on line 1 of /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.load:
Cannot load /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so into server:
/usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so: cannot open shared object file:
No such file or directory

Apache configuration calls the php5.load file which includes the path to the libphp5.so module. The php5.load cannot load libphp5.so file if it is missing from the /usr/lib/apache2/modules/ directory. See if it exists:

# ls -la /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so
 ls: cannot access /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so:
 No such file or directory

See if the libphp5.so module is installed elsewhere on the server using the find and locate command

# find / -name libphp5.so
# locate libphp5.so

if it is, copy it to /usr/lib/apache2/modules/ directory and restart Apache.

If the file is not present, install the ‘libapache2-mod-php5’ package, the PHP5 module for Apache2. It adds the required FilesMatch directives to the Apache configuration.

# apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

The ‘libapache2-mod-php5’ package will create the libphp5.so file under the modules directory and apache2 will restart successfully

# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart