make test requires Apache to be running already, so if you specified NO_HTTPD=1 during the perl Makefile.PL stage, you'll have to build httpd independently before running make test. Go to the Apache source tree and run make, then return to the mod_perl source tree and continue with the server testing.
If you get an error like this:
still waiting for server to warm up...............not ok
you may want to examine the t/logs/error_log file, where all the make test-stage errors are logged. If you still cannot find the problem or this file is completely empty, you may want to run the test with strace (or truss) in the following way (assumming that you are located in the root directory of the mod_perl source tree):
panic% make start_httpd panic% strace -f -s1024 -o strace.out -p `cat t/logs/httpd.pid` & panic% make run_tests panic% make kill_httpd
where the strace -f option tells strace to trace child processes as they are created, -s1024 allows trace strings of a maximum of 1024 characters to be printed (it's 32 by default), -o gives the name of the file to which the output should be written, -p supplies the PID of the parent process, and & puts the job in the background.
When the tests are complete, you can examine the generated strace.out file and hopefully find the problem. We talk about creating and analyzing trace outputs in Chapter 21.