Localhost not accessible

[Ben Schonle]

*In Short:
- After fresh installation of apache2 trying to access localhost or 
127.0.0.1 is not working
- OS: Ubuntu Gutsy
*


Hello,

This is my first post on the mailing list and I try to write as 
precisely as possible.


Actual result:
-----------------------
After installation of Apache when trying to access "localhost" via the 
browser, it loads for several minutes and then an error msg appears. 
Ultimately an time out error appears.


What I did:
------------------
- Installed apache2 via synaptic
- while installing apache 2 an error msg about a qualified domain name 
appeared:

///
Starting web server apache2                                        
apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified 
domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName
///



After some research I figured out that I had to add *ServerName 
"localhost"* to the apache2.conf - I restarted and restarting apache2 
made the error about qualified domain name vanish.

///
# Do NOT add a slash at the end of the directory path.
#
ServerRoot "/etc/apache2"
ServerName "localhost"
///


When writing now: "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" as the URL, it didn't show 
the message "It works".

I recognized, that the /var/www folder did not contain any index file, 
but the /var/www/apache2-default folder.

Thus I tried the following changes on 
*/etc/apache2/sites-available/default:
*
1) Document Root /var/www/apache2-default
2) Directory /var/www/apache2-default
3) removing the   # from   #RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/

However, I was not successful.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Does anybody know how to make accessing localhost work? or point me to 
some tutorial that is addressing the issue?
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////



Further research:
------------------------------

Here also the data from the /etc/hosts:
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 ben-desktop

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

///////////////////////////////////////

the /etc/host.conf contains:
# The "order" line is only used by old versions of the C library.
order hosts,bind
multi on

///////////////////////////////////////

sudo netstat -anp | grep '^tcp.*LISTEN' (I am a newbie to Linux and I 
found this command, because just entering netstat produced too much 
information).

produces the following

////////
ben at ben-desktop:~$ sudo netstat -anp | grep '^tcp.*LISTEN'
[sudo] password for ben:
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:80              0.0.0.0:*               
LISTEN     5114/apache2       tcp6       0      0 
:::22                   :::*                    LISTEN     4693/sshd
///////

If I understand it correctly apache is listening on port 80. Btw what 
does the number 5114 in front of apache2 mean?


Looking forward to a hint how to access localhost!

Ben