apache2 not reloading/start/stopping

[adream]

hi there
i have a web server
apache2
php
mysql
rasbian oct 2012 distro
its been up for nearly four months but now apache has stopped serving pages
its processes are all listed in top as running but it won't respond to
start, stop, reload etc or kill
i don't want to reboot the server, any ideas how to get stuff working again ?
killing doesn't work, is there a more extreme action available apart from reboot

cheers
http://93.97.163.97:81/serendipity/

[redhawk]

Try adding -9 to your kill command i.e. if the PID was 31415 then you need kill -9 31415
If that doesn't work then you may have a zombie process, use the "top" command and check your zombie count.

Richard S.

[adream]

thanks for the suggestions Richard

i have already tried -9 option to no avail

top states there are 0 zombies, weird eh ?

[Jim JKla]

I am not able to solve your primary but I do have an idea for not dropping your site.

It needs a second RPi build a duplicate boot then redirect your port forwarding to the new server.

At that point you can down the old server by pulling the plug and reboot.

It's not the perfect solution and just an idea to kick aound.

I was also just wondering if there was a full log file somewhere.

Warning I'm just kicking ideas around here.

[adream]

after going through the logs i find that remarkably my poor little pi server got hit by a distributed DOS attack... a pretty basic but effective hammering of the thing by ApacheBench from portugal (95.93.172.65) and germany (5.175.160.25) total over 2000 hits on one little php script page in about 120 seconds i had only set it up as a low volume server limiting clients etc because of memory constraints
i have managed to get apache back up and running, not well but serving pages at least... the whole system is spitting out hundreds of php errors in the apache error log now, ho hum
at least its still running and hasn't needed a reboot yet 3 month 24 days uptime, and a DOS attack to its name