APACHECTL(8)apachectlAPACHECTL(8)NAMEapachectl - Apache HTTP Server Control Interface
SYNOPSIS
When acting in pass-through mode, apachectl can take all
the arguments available for the httpd binary.
apachectl [ httpd-argument ]
When acting in SysV init mode, apachectl takes simple,
one-word commands, defined below.
apachectl command
SUMMARYapachectl is a front end to the Apache HyperText Transfer
Protocol (HTTP) server. It is designed to help the admin-
istrator control the functioning of the Apache httpd dae-
mon.
The apachectl script can operate in two modes. First, it
can act as a simple front-end to the httpd command that
simply sets any necessary environment variables and then
invokes httpd, passing through any command line arguments.
Second, apachectl can act as a SysV init script, taking
simple one-word arguments like start, restart, and stop,
and translating them into appropriate signals to httpd.
If your Apache installation uses non-standard paths, you
will need to edit the apachectl script to set the appro-
priate paths to the httpd binary. You can also specify any
necessary httpd command line arguments. See the comments
in the script for details.
The apachectl script returns a 0 exit value on success,
and >0 if an error occurs. For more details, view the com-
ments in the script.
OPTIONS
Only the SysV init-style options are defined here. Other
arguments are defined on the httpd manual page.
start Start the Apache httpd daemon. Gives an
error if it is already running. This is
equivalent to apachectl-k start.
stop Stops the Apache httpd daemon. This is
equivalent to apachectl-k stop.
restart
Restarts the Apache httpd daemon. If the
daemon is not running, it is started. This
command automatically checks the configura-
tion files as in configtest before initiat-
ing the restart to make sure the daemon
doesn't die. This is equivalent to apachectl-k restart.
fullstatus
Displays a full status report from mod_sta-
tus. For this to work, you need to have
mod_status enabled on your server and a
text-based browser such as lynx available on
your system. The URL used to access the sta-
tus report can be set by editing the STA-
TUSURL variable in the script.
status Displays a brief status report. Similar to
the fullstatus option, except that the list
of requests currently being served is omit-
ted.
graceful
Gracefully restarts the Apache httpd daemon.
If the daemon is not running, it is started.
This differs from a normal restart in that
currently open connections are not aborted.
A side effect is that old log files will not
be closed immediately. This means that if
used in a log rotation script, a substantial
delay may be necessary to ensure that the
old log files are closed before processing
them. This command automatically checks the
configuration files as in configtest before
initiating the restart to make sure Apache
doesn't die. This is equivalent to apachectl-k graceful.
configtest
Run a configuration file syntax test. It
parses the configuration files and either
reports Syntax Ok or detailed information
about the particular syntax error. This is
equivalent to apachectl-t.
The following additional option is available, but depre-
cated.
startssl
This is equivalent to apachectl-k start
-DSSL. We recommend that you use that com-
mand explicitly, or you adjust your
httpd.conf to remove the <IfDefine> section
so that SSL will always be available.
Apache HTTP Server 2003-04-29 APACHECTL(8)