Apache configuration (httpd.conf) checking

Many times you may experience apache failing only due to misconfiguration of apache configuration file (httpd.conf or apache.conf or apache2.conf). It is hard to manually check specially when the length of file is long specially due to many virtual hosts. However, we are blessed by an automatic syntax checking tool ported with apache. To check syntax of apache configuration file, run the following command from shell:

service httpd configtest

or,

/usr/sbin/httpd configtest

In either case you should see something like:

Syntax OK

If you get anything else, check that carefully and fix it before restarting apache. Apache may fail to start while that error exits.