apache-ssl restart fails after monthly logrotate

[David Wilk <myca@cia-g.com>]

Howdy folks,

I've been admining debian servers for a few years now and this problem
is a new one on me.  I have the standard apache-ssl setup with logrotate
handling standard logrotation of about 115 virtual hosts in
/var/log/httpd/.  for the first 3 months or so everything went fine at
the monthly log rotation, however for the last 2 months apache-ssl has
failed to restart after logrotation.

The last time this happened, I found the apache parent gone, with
several children straggling around.  I couldn't just issue an
/etc/init.d/apache-ssl start, but had to manually kill the children
first.  There is simply nothing in the logs (well, nothing in
/var/log/apache-ssl logs and the most active virtual host, but I did not
check all virtual host logs)

has anyone seen this before?

oh, system is Debian/Woody on a PIII/1.2G 2G-RAM with plenty of disk
space.

any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

thanks,
Dave
-- 
*******************************
David Wilk
System Administrator
Community Internet Access, Inc.
admin@cia-g.com