Debian install fails with /foswiki.postinst: 211: apache-modconf: not found

I attempted to install Foswiki from the debian packages.

running Ubuntu 8.04 with apache2

The installation went fine, until I was asked for the apache user password. I had no idea (the machine was pre-configured) so I guessed nothing, just hit return. The installation continued and resulted in:

...
Setting up foswiki (1.0.0-1) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/foswiki.postinst: 211: apache-modconf: not found
dpkg: error processing foswiki (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 127
Errors were encountered while processing:
 foswiki
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
make: *** [foswiki] Error 100
root@tinkerbell:/home/configure#

I thought it might be caused by an incorrect password. So I removed foswiki with apt-get remove foswiki

Then I changed that www-data password to one I knew (as root)

Then I re-ran apt-get install foswiki. However, no questions are asked this time. (There were three the first time). And the error remains.

Googling has confused me further. apache-modconf appears to be an apache 1.3 thing. And it is true that I don't have it. I tried apt-get -s install apache-modconf With the result: E: Couldn't find package apache-modconf

I am capable to install from the tarball, but I Iike the Debian way. Hopefully this question helps improve the install kit.

Had a further look at the code and found (line numbers are mine. Don't have much options on a remote login):

1        servers="apache apache-perl apache-ssl apache2"
2        for server in $servers; do
3                if [ -e /etc/$server/conf.d ]; then
4                        includefile=/etc/foswiki/apache.conf
5                        if [ -e /etc/$server/conf.d/foswiki.conf ]; then
6                                rm -f /etc/foswiki/$server-conf.d-foswiki.conf_o
ld
7                                mv /etc/$server/conf.d/foswiki.conf /etc/foswiki
/$server-conf.d-foswiki.conf_old
8                        fi
9                        ln -s $includefile /etc/$server/conf.d/foswiki.conf
10                       if [ $server = "apache2" ]; then
11                               a2enmod  authn_file
12                               a2enmod  rewrite
13                       else
14                               apache-modconf $server enable authn_file
15                               apache-modconf $server enable rewrite
16                        fi
17                fi
18        done

Line two loops over a collection of servers and checks whether they exist by checking for the existence of /etc/$server/conf.d

Ha, and /etc/apache/conf.d exists on my machine, and has some stuff in there. All of it copied in /etc/apache2/conf.d Since I don't use it, I renamed it to /etc/apache/conf.d.OBSOLETE and re-ran the install.

It worked