XAMMP erroneous error message

While setting up a test system for a new MVC PHP web project, I ran into a hiccup when I restarted Apache under XAMPP on my Mac (OSX).

Googling this error turns out not to be very helpful. It is shown as an error, but no solutions.

This is a hard-to-track-down XAMPP error because the error issued has nothing to do with the problem.

Here is the text from the error dialog, so Google et al can find it: “/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin/apachectl: line 70: ulimit: open files: cannot modify limit: Invalid argument”.

I had simply created a typo in the CustomLog line in the httpd-vhosts.conf file.

This was in the httpd-vhosts.conf file in the code block sort like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName projectname.dev
    ServerAlias www.projectname.dev
    DocumentRoot "/Users/andrewault/www/my.projectname.com/public"
    ErrorLog "/Users/andrewault/www/my.projectname.com/logs/error.log"
    CustomLog "/Users/andrewault/www/my.projectname.com/logs/combined.log" common
</VirtualHost>

The directory part of the CustomLog line was wrong, causing the error.