Why and when to restart your web server (PHP)

Problem

You are unsure why or when you must restart your web server (Apache, PHP-FPM, Nginx, etc.) after:

Installing or upgrading the PHP agent
Updating PHP to a major release version
Changing any agent configuration settings in the newrelic.ini or newrelic.cfg files
Utilizing external startup mode for the daemon

Cause

The PHP agent is a PHP extension. When your web server starts up and loads PHP, it also loads the PHP agent and parses its newrelic.ini configuration file. The web server uses that configuration until told to re-load and parse configuration files again. Restarting prompts the web server to do that.

You must restart your web server when:

Tip

To avoid this situation, set an exclude for newrelic-php5* in your package manager.

If your package manager automatically updates the agent, you must restart your web server. Updating the agent without restarting can cause the agent to stop reporting.

This issue occurs when auto-update is enabled and the daemon updates to a new version. The new daemon is then unable to communicate with the agent, which is still running the old version.

To avoid this, the new agent must be started after the update. This process is complicated, because a full agent restart also requires you to restart your web server software.

Using the apachectl restart command does not always fully restart the web server, so it doesn't re-parse the agent's configuration files. New Relic recommends using:

apachectl stop
apachectl start

For more help

If you need more help, check out these support and learning resources:

Browse the Explorers Hub to get help from the community and join in discussions.
Find answers on our sites and learn how to use our support portal.
Run New Relic Diagnostics, our troubleshooting tool for Linux, Windows, and macOS.
Review New Relic's and and documentation.

Why and when to restart your web server (PHP)

Problem

Cause

You modify your configuration file.

Your package manager auto-updates the agent without restarting the web server.

Tip

The daemon is set to start up in external mode.

Apache isn't fully restarting with the `apachectl restart` command.

For more help

Why and when to restart your web server (PHP)

Problem

Cause

Your package manager auto-updates the agent without restarting the web server.

The daemon is set to start up in external mode.

Apache isn't fully restarting with the apachectl restart command.

.css-3u3y73{fill:none;stroke:currentColor;stroke-width:2;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:round;}.css-1bvd50p{width:1rem;height:1rem;fill:none;stroke:currentColor;stroke-width:2;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:round;}For more help

Apache isn't fully restarting with the `apachectl restart` command.

For more help