httpd dead but subsys locked

[Benjamin J. Weiss]

From: "Nitin" <nitinmehta at kappa.net.in>
>I'm facing this new problem.
>Everything was working OK, suddenly, https got killed and now,
>when I start it, it displays OK. But nothing actually happens, no
>processes started. When I check the status, it displays "httpd
>dead but subsys locked." and surprisingly all websites (hosted
>on that server) are working fine.
>
>I cann't take chances to reboot the server.
>I've checked, there are no pid files and mesage file doesn't display
>any errors either.... where or what else should I check?
>
>Please help me as soon as possible

Nitin,

A quick check of /etc/init.d/httpd shows the following code snippet:

start() {
        echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
        check13 || exit 1
        daemon $httpd $OPTIONS
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/httpd
        return $RETVAL
}

Now, you see the part that says "touch /var/lock/subsys/httpd" ?  When
Apache runs, it spawns a bunch of processes with their own pid's, so the
script keeps track of whether or not it's running by creating that file
(/var/lock/subsys/httpd) when it runs. Then when it stops, it deletes it.

Check to see if that file exists.  If it does, then delete it and try
running "service httpd restart" again, and see if it comes up.

Ben