Starting and Stopping Apache

During the installation process, a Bourne shell (sh) script named httpd was installed into /etc/rc.d/init.d. To manually stop and start the server, run httpd with either stop or start as an argument.

To start your server, type the command:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start
      

You will be prompted to fill in your password. After you type it in, your server will start.

To stop your server, type the command:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd stop
      

The command restart is a shorthand way of stopping and then starting your server. restart does explicitly stop and then start your server, so you will be prompted for your password. restart looks like the following:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart
      

If you just finished editing something in your httpd.conf file, you don't need to explicitly stop and start your server. Instead you may use the reload command. The benefit of using reload is that you will not need to type in your password. Your password will remain cached across reloads, but it will not be cached between stops and starts. reload looks like the following:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd reload
      

Your server (the httpd process) will start automatically when your machine boots. Be aware that you'll be prompted for the secure server's password after the machine boots, unless you generated a key for your secure server without password protection.