*read the post title*

Take care of your server hostname, ensure it resolvable, either by DNS query or local /etc/hosts. If none of that step is produce sufficient result, apache will refuse to start the http daemon (httpd). The point of failure that I got so far is about gethostname POSIX function that used to determine server hostname. After reading the manual page (Yeah, rite, RTFM will lead you to the source Luke!)

1
"man hostname"

referring

1
"gethostname"

POSIX function.

To solve this, check your hostname with

1
"hostname"

command and find a match ip address that pointing to that hostname on

1
"/etc/hosts"

or make sure it can be resolved by DNS query. At any case, an entry on

1
"/etc/hosts"

is the best solution for me, but it was not so flexible to handle, when any changes happened on your DNS records.

Today I get this problems on my brand new slackware web server. Hope it can help someone out there.