Restart Apache without closing open connections

Contributed by qmchenry  
Tagged: Apache web server  

After making changes to Apache’s configuration file (httpd.conf), it is necessary to restart Apache for the changes to take effect. A normal restart will close active connections which may cause problems for users.

To restart Apache gracefully without aborting open connections or to start Apache if it is not running:

apachectl graceful

If apachectl is not in your PATH and you don’t know where it is, refer to the recipe Find a file by name to find the location of apachectl, then run it with the fully qualified path, for example:

/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl graceful