Apache appears not to run... but it does

Basically I’ve said all in title; more explanations: Apache is running, otherwise my site would be offline, however in the Webmin/virtualmin admin panel it appears stopped. In the processes panel I see a lot of apache processes running. However, since it appears stopped I can’t make modification or change settings (I guess).
I’m running CentOS Linux 5.5 (Kernel and CPU Linux 2.6.32.8 on i686), Webmin version 1.520, Virtualmin version 3.81.gpl GPL, Apache version 2.2.3.
I don’t know where to look to fix the problem, I’m not such an expert - I’m actually learning something new every day about linux and server administration.
I don’t know where to look first to fix the problem, so any advice will be appreciated :slight_smile:

BTW, this happened since last week, after I’ve installed the latest virtualmin updates and also some system updates (which unfortunately I don’t remember what they were).

Thank you!

Webmin/Virtualmin seem to use Apache’s PID file /var/run/apache2.pid (under Ubuntu, might be named differently under your distro) to determine whether it is currently running. If that file got lost somehow (or maybe a system update changed its name, although that is somewhat unlikely), VMin - and also the Apache start script - will have trouble managing the server.

Check if the PID file still exists for you. If not, you need to kill Apache - it will not suffice to do /etc/init.d/apache2 stop, since that script also uses the PID file. You need to do killall apache2, or depending on distro, possibly killall httpd.

After that, do /etc/init.d/apache2 start. Then click Refresh system information on VMin’s system info page. Unlike Webmin’s Apache2 module, VMin’s sysinfo page will not pick up the changed status of Apache before you do tell it to refresh info.

I’m using the same config as the original poster and this doesn’t fix it. I’ve even got a valid pid file, with the correct pid in it. This has just recently shown up, and it’s got to be a vmin bug.

Well, since you already posted a bug report… and Jamie replied to it… I suppose we’ll get it fixed there. :slight_smile: