Connection refused after apache update

Solution 1:

"Connection refused" would mean that apache is not listening on port 80; run this command to make sure" lsof -i:80, if you found no output then start apache and try again

Update: after seeing some output of different commands; it turned out that libapache2-mod-php5 is not installed according to dpkg -l | grep apache2 it was flagged as 'rc' (removed, but configuration files remaining). Since the debug information was showing loading mod_php5 then the absence of this package is what causing apache not to start

Solution 2:

Do you have your "Listen" directives in your vhost files or in /etc/apache2/ports.conf?

You should have a line similar to :

Listen 80