I have a Slackware 8.1 installation and I recently downloaded the apache-1.3.27 upgrade package from the Slackware Web site. I also upgraded to mod_ssl-2.8.12_1.3.27. After installation, my secure Web site, which used a self-signed certificate, ceased to function; instead, my Apache error file became filled with error messages like the following:

[Sun Feb 23 15:05:39 2003] [error] mod_ssl: Child could not open SSLMutex lockfile
 /var/log/apache/ssl_mutex.20793 (System error follows)
[Sun Feb 23 15:05:39 2003] [error] System: No such file or directory (errno: 2)

At first I did not fully understand the cause, but this problem was fixed after I generated a new key and self-signed certificate:

openssl genrsa -out server.key 1024
openssl req -new -key server.key -x509 -out server.crt

Later, however, when I redid the upgrade on another server, I paid closer attention and found out the real culprit: I used the default certificate file name, /etc/apache/ssl.crt/server.crt, which was overwritten during the upgrade.