Lighttpd restart and force-reload commands

Question

What is the difference between the following

sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

and

/etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload

?

Answer 1

On my platform (ubutnu), I found that they are the same. Just looked the file and found:

case "$1" in

.... processing other options

;;
restart|force-reload)
  processing restart and force-reload options

For other services, it might be different.

Answer 2

This can also be achieved using Signals. See the Blogpost about Lighty's Angel for an overview of the Signals supported by lighttpd.

In short

• SIGHUP leads to a graceful restart (config reloads)
• SIGINT is graceful shutdown as now
• all unhandled signals lead to a restart of the lighttpd process

The debian Policy Manual also explains the different parameters:

• start
  start the service,

• stop
  stop the service,

• restart
  stop and restart the service if it's already running, otherwise start the service

• reload
  cause the configuration of the service to be reloaded without actually stopping and restarting the service,

• force-reload
  cause the configuration to be reloaded if the service supports this, otherwise restart the service.