Login as root and type the following command
# /etc/init.d/httpd reload
OR
# apachectl -k graceful
This is also known as gracefully restarting the Apache httpd daemon. If the daemon is not running, it is started. This differs from a normal restart in that currently open connections are not aborted. A side effect is that old log files will not be closed immediately. This means that if used in a log rotation script, a substantial delay may be necessary to ensure that the old log files are closed before processing them.
