Apache Commands You Should Know

Apache HTTP server is the most popular web server in the world. It is a free, open-source, and cross-platform HTTP server providing powerful features that can be extended with a wide variety of modules.

If you are a developer or system administrator, chances are that you’re dealing with Apache regularly.

This guide will review the most important and frequently used Apache commands, including starting, stopping, and restarting Apache.

Before You Begin #

We assume that you are logged in as root or user with sudo privileges. The commands in this guide should work on any modern Linux distribution like Ubuntu 20.04 , CentOS 8 , and Debian 10 .

In Ubuntu and Debian, the Apache service is named apache2, while in Red-Hat based systems such as CentOS, the name of the Apache service is httpd.

If you are running CentOS, just replace apache2 with httpd in the commands below.

Start Apache #

Starting Apache is pretty simple. Just type the following command.

sudo systemctl start apache2

On success, the command doesn’t produce any output.

If you are running an older Linux distribution without systemd to start Apache, type:

sudo service apache2 start

Instead of manually starting the Apache service, it is a good idea to set it to start on system boot:

sudo systemctl enable apache2

Stop Apache #

Stopping Apache shuts down the main Apache process and all child processes, even if there are open connections.

To stop Apache, run one of the following commands:

sudo systemctl stop apache2sudo service apache2 stop

Restart Apache #

The restart option is a quick way of stopping and then starting the Apache server.

Use one of the following commands to perform a restart:

sudo systemctl restart apache2sudo service apache2 restart

This is the command that you will probably use the most frequently.

Reload Apache #

You need to reload or restart Apache whenever you make changes to its configuration.

On reload, the main Apache process shuts down the child processes, loads the new configuration, and starts new child processes.

To reload Apache, use one of the following commands:

sudo systemctl reload apache2sudo service apache2 reload

Test Apache Configuration #

Whenever you make changes to the Apache server’s configuration file, it is a good idea to test the configuration before restarting or reloading the service.

Use the following command to test the Apache configuration for any syntax or system errors:

sudo apachectl -t

The output will look like this:

Syntax OK

If there are any errors, the command prints a detailed message.

View Apache Status #

To check the status of the Apache service, use the following command:

sudo systemctl status apache2

The output will look something like below:

● apache2.service - The Apache HTTP Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apache2.service; enabled; vendor preset: 
  Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/apache2.service.d
           └─apache2-systemd.conf
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2019-05-29 21:16:55 UTC; 6s ago
  Process: 938 ExecStop=/usr/sbin/apachectl stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 956 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/apachectl start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCES
 Main PID: 997 (apache2)
    Tasks: 55 (limit: 1152)
   CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
           ├─ 997 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─ 999 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           └─1000 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

Check Apache Version #

Sometimes, you may need to know the version of your Apache so you can debug an issue or determine whether a certain feature is available.

You can check your Apache version by running:

sudo apache2 -v

Server version: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
Server built:   2019-04-03T13:22:37

The -V (uppercase) option shows the Apache version along with the configure option.

sudo apache2 -V

Conclusion #

In this guide, we have shown you some of the most essential Apache commands. If you want to learn more about the Apache command line, visit the Apache documentation

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment.