Topic: Cron, Apache and a script

[Thomas]

Hi,

I'm using SME 5.6u4. Yesterday my Apache crashed for no apparent reason. I was able to restart it right away, as I was sitting right next to the machine when it happened.

But what If I had been away?

That got me thinking (I'm trying not to hurt myself): Could it be possible to make a script that checked if Apache is up and running, and the let Cron run that script every 5-10 minutes? If the script finds out Apache is either dead or crashed, then it does a apachectl restart.

What say all you SME wise people? Doable, or downright stupid?

Regards
Thomas

[Nathan Fowler]

Easily done, however, instead of creating a band-aid, why not investigate as to why Apache is crashing to begin with.

[Thomas]

Hello Nathan,

I'm sure Apache crashed due to some "system hiccup", since this server is only running pure and VERY simple HTML. I haven't been able to find anything odd in the logs either.

So this band-aid will be for those very rare situations where Apache just decides to shut down for no apparent reason.

Sincerely,
Thomas

[Nathan Fowler]

Sounds like a winner to me:

Script you'll want to use is:
http://www.stickit.nu/utils/apachemon.pl

It's a perl script that runs in an infinite loop, you won't want to cron this, but rather add it to /etc/rc.d/rc.local