Apache Failed to start.. Web Port already in use

[westofsa]

I have a clean install of Xampp on a server that is already running a web server on port 80, 443 and 3306.
Server is Debian 9 with Xampp 7.4.3

After installing Xampp I went in and changed the default ports that Xampp was listening to, so that I could start it without affecting my already running webserver / reverse proxy.

I went into the /opt/lampp/etc directory and changed the
httpd.conf file listening port from 80 to 8080,
the my.cnf port from 3306 to 83306
the /extras/httpd-ssl.conf and changed 443 to 8443

After trying to start the Service, I got an error message that the Web Port was already in use, even though checking server for ports in use did not show either of the ports.

Turned out the issue is in the /opt/lampp/lampp file. It is set to test the default ports i.e web ports port 80 and port 443, but looks like the MySQl port test is checking 3308 even though the actual port configured is 3306 (which is why that wasn't failing).
I spent a good many hours trying to figure out what was going on, so hopefully will help someone else.

Change the "testport 80" to "testport 8080" and repeat if necessary for port 443 and the SQL port.

After the change the Apache started.

Hopefully that helps... Also looks like there is a typo for the MySQL port as by default MySQL listens on 3306, not 3308.