Apache dies after logrotate

[Iain <iain@voffice.myspinach.org>]

Hi,

I am experiencing a problem where apache goes into a kind of zombie state 
after the daily logrotate script runs and send a -HUP signal to apache. 
Apache still manages to serve some requests but it does so very slowly and 
eventually just stops responding. This doesn't happen every day but quite 
frequently.

Versions are:

-- System Information
Debian Release: 3.0
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux spinach 2.4.19 #1 Mon Sep 2 20:19:43 CST 2002 i686
Locale: LANG=en_AU, LC_CTYPE=en_AU

Versions of packages apache depends on:
ii  apache-common             1.3.26-0woody3 Support files for all Apache 
webse
ii  dpkg                      1.9.21         Package maintenance system for 
Deb
ii  libc6                     2.2.5-11.2     GNU C Library: Shared libraries 
an
ii  libdb2                    2:2.7.7.0-7    The Berkeley database routines 
(ru
ii  libexpat1                 1.95.2-6       XML parsing C library - runtime 
li
ii  logrotate                 3.5.9-8        Log rotation utility
ii  mime-support              3.18-1         MIME files 'mime.types' & 
'mailcap
ii  perl                      5.6.1-7        Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 
ii  perl [perl5]              5.6.1-7        Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 

As you can imagine this is very frustrating on a live server. Has anyone else 
experienced this? Any ideas what could be causing it? Is it simply a bug in 
that version of apache?

cheers, Iain.