If you're running Apache in a terminal, in the foreground, and you resize the window, this happens: chris@fen-desktop2(dev)$ apache2 -f apache/dev.conf -D FOREGROUND apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName [Thu Jan 27 12:01:35 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.3.2-1ubuntu4.7 with Suhosin-Patch mod_wsgi/2.8 Python/2.6.5 configured -- resuming normal operations [Thu Jan 27 12:01:40 2011] [notice] caught SIGWINCH, shutting down gracefully SIGWINCH indicates a window size change, it should not be fatal.
You are correct that SIGWINCH is used to signal a windows size change to the applications running on a terminal. Due to the lack of other signal numbers and given the fact that httpd normally runs detached from a terminal the SIGWINCH signal was chosen to instruct httpd to do a graceful shutdown. So this works as designed.
Is there any workaround for this? It also affects downstream services, e.g. mod_wsgi which *are* run in the foreground. See f.ex. https://bz.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=50669.
(In reply to user from comment #2) > Is there any workaround for this? > > It also affects downstream services, e.g. mod_wsgi which *are* run in the > foreground. See f.ex. https://bz.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=50669. That URL was supposed to be https://github.com/GrahamDumpleton/mod_wsgi/issues/105 :-(