mpm-event based apache has now survived two nightly runs of logrotate doing '/etc/init.d/apache2 reload' since I ensured it will only do that once per run.
So what is it about mpm-event that causes apache2 to crash when multiple '/etc/init.d/apache2 reload' invocations happen in very quick succession ? Smells like an upstream bug, yes ? Not that I can seem to reproduce this with: COUNT=1 ; while [ $COUNT -lt 80 ] ; do ( /etc/init.d/apache2 reload &); COUNT=`expr $COUNT + 1` ; done Perhaps it's not just the rapid reloads, but combining those with needing to create new log files ? Although it does leave me with only processes like: /usr/sbin/apache2 -k graceful running, rather than the more usual: /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start And some instances of the init.d script complaining "Apache2 is not running" on subsequent invocations.