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sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

interrupting the operations on the webservers hosted by apache ?

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1 Answer 1

up vote 10 down vote accepted

Reload does a "Graceful Restart".

From the Apache documentation Stopping and Restarting :


In theory no operations will be interrupted, but there will be a wave of server-processes restarting, with some (normally trivial enough) overhead.

In effect there are more variables involved, such as whether you are using prefork or worker, the number of children that you have specified, and in the case of worker the max threads per child.

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ok. So, more precisely, if my customer is performing an order on a php based e-shop. If i reload apache without restarting, is he going to have issues ? thanks –  Patrick Sep 26 '10 at 7:59
Again in theory, as long as the customer order is handled in one php call, and as long as the reload is not critical for the correct functioning of "old generation" servers, then all will pass gracefully and well. But it's easy enough to test in practice. –  harrymc Sep 26 '10 at 8:25
Note that the init scripts are added by the packager. The ones for redhat/oracle linux apache v2.2 send a -HUP signal when calling service httpd reload. For a graceful restart service httpd graceful should be called which calls /usr/sbin/apachectl graceful. –  David Balažic Jul 28 at 17:37

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