To safely restart Apache on a production server, it’s recommended to use the apachectl or httpd tool (depending on your system), which offers a graceful restart command. This ensures that any current operations are completed before the service restarts.
Verify Configuration Files
Before restarting, ensure that your Apache configuration files are free from syntax errors. You can use the -t flag with apachectl or httpd to check this:
- On Debian-based systems:
sudo apachectl -t - On RHEL-based systems:
sudo httpd -t
This command will tell you if your configuration files are okay. If they aren’t, fix the errors before proceeding.
Restart Apache Graceful
The graceful command, also known as graceful restart, is an essential part of managing an Apache HTTP Server. This command allows the server to restart without abruptly closing existing connections.
When you initiate a graceful restart (using apachectl -k graceful or httpd -k graceful depending on your system), Apache waits for active connections to complete before restarting the service. During this process, new connections are queued and begin processing once the server restarts.
Once you’re sure your configuration files are in order, you can use the following command for a graceful restart:
- On Debian-based systems:
sudo apachectl graceful - On RHEL-based systems:
sudo httpd -k graceful
The graceful option tells Apache to finish serving any requests that are in progress but not to take any new ones, restarting when it’s finished. This is better for a production server than a simple restart (systemctl restart apache2 or systemctl restart httpd), which might disrupt active connections.
Keep in mind that the specific commands may vary depending on your server’s operating system. For Ubuntu/Debian systems, apache2 would be used, whereas httpd is used on CentOS/Fedora and other Red Hat based systems.
Again, ensure you’re running these commands as root or with sudo if necessary.