Sometimes you want to restart your Apache server after changing some configuration in your virutual hosts,sites etc, but you have few hundred clients currently downloading files from your server and you don’t want to disconnect them.
You need to use the following command
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 graceful
This will gracefully restart your Apache with new configuration without affecting your client’s connections.
It would be better to test first the Apache configuration file for errors:
/etc/init.d/apache2 configtest
Hey thanks for reference, just used it.
Great tip, thanks.