When you see the message AH00548: NameVirtualHost has no effect and will be removed in the next release during Apache restart, it indicates you're using deprecated configuration syntax. This warning appears in Apache 2.4+ when the legacy NameVirtualHost directive is still present in your config files.

Apache 2.2 required explicit NameVirtualHost declarations, but since Apache 2.4:

# Old style (deprecated)
NameVirtualHost *:80

# New style (Apache 2.4+)
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    # ... other directives
</VirtualHost>

The error message points to /etc/apache2/ports.conf:8 where the obsolete directive resides. Modern Apache installations automatically handle name-based virtual hosts without explicit declaration.

1. Open your ports.conf file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf

2. Remove or comment out the NameVirtualHost line:

# NameVirtualHost *:80  # This line should be removed or commented

3. Verify your virtual host configurations contain proper <VirtualHost> blocks:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/example
    <Directory /var/www/example>
        Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

After making changes, always test your configuration before restarting:

sudo apache2ctl configtest

Then restart Apache:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

If you're hosting on multiple ports, ensure each port has its own <VirtualHost> block:

Listen 80
Listen 443

<VirtualHost *:80>
    # HTTP configuration
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
    # HTTPS configuration
    SSLEngine on
    SSLCertificateFile /path/to/cert.pem
</VirtualHost>

For systems upgraded from Apache 2.2, check these additional files for obsolete directives:

grep -r "NameVirtualHost" /etc/apache2/

---

The warning "NameVirtualHost has no effect and will be removed in the next release" appears when running Apache 2.4 or later versions. This occurs because the NameVirtualHost directive has been deprecated since Apache 2.3.11 and will be completely removed in future releases.

In older Apache versions (2.2 and earlier), you needed to explicitly declare which IP address and port combination would be used for name-based virtual hosts:

# Old configuration (Apache 2.2)
NameVirtualHost *:80
NameVirtualHost *:443

In Apache 2.4+, this is no longer necessary as the virtual host system automatically handles this functionality.

For Apache 2.4+, you should:

1. Remove all NameVirtualHost directives from your configuration
2. Ensure your virtual hosts are properly defined

Here's a proper virtual host configuration example:

    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

After making changes:

sudo apache2ctl configtest
sudo systemctl restart apache2

1. Having NameVirtualHost in ports.conf (line 8 as shown in your error)

2. Mixing old and new style configurations

3. Forgetting to remove all instances of the directive

If you're maintaining configurations that need to work across different Apache versions, you can use IfVersion directives:

    NameVirtualHost *:80

However, this approach is only recommended for transitional periods.

While the warning doesn't indicate any immediate functional issues, removing deprecated directives improves configuration clarity and prepares your setup for future Apache updates.