How to start, restart and stop Apache service

Apache service can be restarted (or started and stopped) using Apache's binary, though the binary name itself differs between distribution.

Most Unix-based distributions will then even come up with scripts and tools to manage services running on their platform (Apache included), and the most common ones are System V. Init scripts and systemd.

Managing Apache such as to start, restart or stop the service will then depend on the platform that your Apache service is running, and your personal preference (as some platform for example comes with both System V. Init scripts and systemd while of course come with the Apache binary for you to directly manage the service). You can also use the same methods to view the current running status of the Apache service.

Method	Command
System V. Init scripts	/etc/init.d/httpd [start\|restart\|stop\|status]
Systemd	systemctl [start\|restart\|stop\|status] httpd
service command	service httpd [start\|restart\|stop\|status]
Apache binary	apachectl [start\|restart\|stop\|status]

Different platform might use different binary/script names such as apache, apache2, apachectl or apache2ctl instead of httpd in the above example.
Apache binary name for different distribution

Steps to manage Apache from command line:

Below are example commands to manage Apache service on Ubuntu from the terminal.

Stop Apache service using Apache binary.

$ sudo apache2ctl stop
AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message

Start Apache service using System V. Init scripts.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start
[ ok ] Starting apache2 (via systemctl): apache2.service.

Restart Apache service using systemd.
```
$ sudo systemctl restart apache2
```

View Apache running status using systemd.

$ sudo systemctl status apache2
● apache2.service - The Apache HTTP Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apache2.service; enabled; vendor preset:
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-01-06 05:26:10 UTC; 14s ago
     Docs: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/
  Process: 1846 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/apachectl start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCE
 Main PID: 1874 (apache2)
    Tasks: 55 (limit: 4591)
   Memory: 5.7M
   CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
           ├─1874 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─1875 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           └─1876 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

Jan 06 05:26:10 host systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
Jan 06 05:26:10 host apachectl[1846]: AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably deter
Jan 06 05:26:10 host systemd[1]: Started The Apache HTTP Server.

Author: Mohd Shakir Zakaria
Cloud architect by profession but always consider himself as a developer, entrepreneur and an opensource enthusiast.

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