The Keith wrote:
> I'm relatively new to linux, and I recently compiled and installed
> lighttpd on my vps running debian etch. Once installed, I realized that
> I neglected to install the init scripts and could not restart my server
> to implement some changes in my conf file. Having never restarted a
> process before, I wasn't sure whether i necessarily needed the init
> scripts, which, and correct me if I'm wrong, are just shell scripts? I
> discovered the "kill" command and the "ps -A" command to locate the
> process id. I was able to successfully restart the server, but I'm
> wondering now if this is an acceptable way to do it, or if there is any
> good reason to use init scripts instead? Help would be greatly
> appreciated--thanks.
>
> keith

Init scripts are to ease the stop/start/reload etc of processes.
So init scripts are generally a good plan.

Not being familiar with lighthttpd, apache has its own script, named
apachectl. That one can be used to restart too. If lighthttpd has an
equivalent, you can use that.