How to start-stop apache (IBM HTTPServer) server?

To start and stop the HTTPServer, one need to do the following:

Login to the Portal Server and sudo to root if the HTTPD process is own by root
cd to /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/bin
execute the following command to stop and start the server
3.1 Stopping HTTPD process
./apache -k stop
3.2 Starting HTTPD process
./apache -k start
Prior to starting the httpd task it is good practice to check if the httpd tasks has been shutdown properly, you can do that by issuing the command:
ps -ef | grep httpd
make sure no httpd process is running
Alternatively, you could issue the restart command as below
./apache -k restart
To confirm the process has started properly, you could checked the error_log in /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/logs/, you should see this entry

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; Plugins loaded.

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; ——————–System Information———————–

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; Bld version: 7.0.0.31

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; Bld date: Dec 4 2013, 22:55:17

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; Webserver: IBM_HTTP_Server

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; OS : Linux i386

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; Hostname = localhost.com

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; NOFILES = hard: 502400, soft: 502400

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; MAX COREFILE SZ = hard: INFINITE, soft: 0

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; DATA = hard: INFINITE, soft: INFINITE

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [error] unknown log level: 0; ————————————————————–

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [notice] WebSphere Plugins loaded.

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [notice] Bld version: 7.0.0

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [notice] Bld date: Dec 4 2013, 22:56:49

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [notice] Webserver: IBM_HTTP_Server

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [notice] Using config file /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/conf/httpd.conf

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [debug] mod_mpmstats.c(256): mpmstats daemon started (pid 7665)

[Mon Aug 18 12:43:55 2014] [notice] IBM_HTTP_Server/7.0.0.31 (Unix) configured — resuming normal operations

Stopping and restarting (Apache HTTP Server Version 2.2)