Apache HTTPD reload

Question

Does anyone know if while Apache HTTPD is doing a reload (which, let's say, takes five seconds) can it still serve requests during that time?

Answer 1

As far as I know, no. However there is a graceful restart which stops child nodes halting mid-request which I think takes care of this.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/stopping.html

Answer 2

First of all, you say reload, but assuming you mean 'reload' OR 'restart':

   /my/path/to/httpd restart

• Causes the current httpd process to exit, which means for a time the server appears to be down, as in not serving any requests.

  /my/path/to/httpd reload
  

• Does not cause the current server to exit, which means connections are never refused and thus the server never looks down (but is rather slow for a little while)

• Will cause all long running httpd daemon requests to exit