Red Hat Knowledgebase

A good way to perform a syntax check on apache is to execute the command:

#httpd -t

This command runs syntax tests on the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf configuration file. It imeediately exits after these tests with either a return code of 0 (Syntax OK) or a return code not equal to 0.

Below is a sample session with correct syntax:

# httpd -t
Syntax OK

Here is another sample session with a syntax error:

# httpd -t
Syntax error on line 44 of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:
Invalid command 'ServerToken', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

The error detected means that ServerToken is an unknown directive. The actual directive is ServerTokens.

It is a good practice to perform syntax checks before starting/restarting Apache after making any changes to the configuration files. This is especially true if the web service is critical. If there is a syntax error in any of the Apache configuration files, it will fail to come up during a restart, resulting in service downtime.