Unable to start Apache on a Plesk server: No matches for the wildcard '*.conf' in

Sergey Senko

Updated May 22, 2025 12:36

Plesk for Linux kb: technical ModSecurity

Symptoms

Apache web-server fails to start with the following error message in configuration:

Note: The name of the ModSecurity rule-set in the error message may vary.

on CentOS/RHEL-based distributions

# httpd -t
httpd: Syntax error on line 353 of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf: Syntax error on line 5 of /etc/httpd/conf.d/security2.conf: Syntax error on line 6 of /etc/httpd/conf/modsecurity.d/zz_rules.conf: No matches for the wildcard '*.conf' in '/etc/httpd/conf/modsecurity.d/rules/modsecurity_crs-plesk', failing (use IncludeOptional if required)
on Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions:

# apache2ctl -t
apache2: Syntax error on line 141 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Syntax error on line 4 of /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/security2.conf: Syntax error on line 6 of /etc/apache2/modsecurity.d/zz_rules.conf: No matches for the wildcard '*.conf' in
'/etc/apache2/modsecurity.d/rules/tortix', failing (use IncludeOptional if required)

The ModSecurity configuration file zz_rules.conf contains links to non-existent files.

To solve the issue need to update the zz_rules.conf and replace "Include" option with "IncludeOptional".

For CentOS/RHEL-based distributions

Connect to the Plesk server via SSH.
Open the file zz_rules.conf in a text editor. In this example, we are using the vi editor:

# vi /etc/httpd/conf/modsecurity.d/zz_rules.conf
Replace "Include" with "IncludeOptional" in all lines.
Save the changes and close the file.
Start Apache:

# service httpd start
Log in to Plesk > go to Tools & Settings > Web Application Firewall (ModSecurity) and activate ModSecurity.

For Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions

Connect to the Plesk server via SSH.
Open the file zz_rules.conf in a text editor. In this example, we are using the vi editor:

# vi /etc/apache2/modsecurity.d/zz_rules.conf
Replace "Include" with "IncludeOptional" in all lines.
Save the changes and close the file.
Start Apache:

# service apache2 start
Log in to Plesk > go to Tools & Settings > Web Application Firewall (ModSecurity) and activate ModSecurity.