I just spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out why apache suddenly decided to stop working. After much messing around in DOS I managed to find that Skype was listening on port 80, and so blocking Apache from binding to that port itself.

It turns out that Skype does this to get through firewalls and stuff like that, apparently nothing seriously bad or anything, but god damn annoying. Why the hell doesn’t it say anything about this on the site? Perhaps something like: “Warning, if you actually want to use port 80, then you have to start your other program before Skype starts otherwise it will take control of this port and disallow access to any other process.“

Silly program. I know it doesn’t affect most people, but still, a bet a lot of people have Apache installed on their computers.

Anyway, that was fun. Continue reading →