It may be because at the time the attempt at starting the server is made, the previous process has not yet completely shut down. You should see a message in the error log saying that Apache is unable to bind the address/port. This is frequent on busy servers. Take a look at your logs to verify this. In that case a workaround could be to modify the implementation of the restart option of the script /etc/init.d/apache so that it does not do a start/stop but rather uses the "reload" option of httpd. -ascs -----Original Message----- From: David Wolever [mailto:wolever.lists@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 3:56 AM To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [users@httpd] Apache Starts Intermittently Hello List, I've noticed that, on the two web servers I keep alive, Apache will tell me it has started when it really has not. I will re-start Apache: $ sudo /etc/init.d/apache restart * Stopping apache... [ ok ] * Starting apache... [ ok ] But, if I use `ps aufx | grep apache` to check and see if it is running, nothing shows up (and, obviously, I can't connect to port 80). If I do exactly the same thing to re-start it again, it usually works just fine. The only way I can tell the difference between a fake start and a real start is that a real start takes a second or so longer. Both machines are running Gentoo and Apache 1.3.33. Is this an issue with Apache? With Gentoo? Does it happen to anyone else? Thanks, David --------------------------------------------------------------------- The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project. See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx " from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --------------------------------------------------------------------- The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project. See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx " from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx