Monit stopping but not restarting Apache

[Jeb Wilkins]

Hi All,

I've got a monit script which monitors apaches via a https page
request. If Apache fails to respond, it should get restarted. What
actually happens is Apache gets stopped, isn't restarted, then the
next monit cycle notices Apache is down and starts it. Syslog
indicates that monit thinks it is starting apache immediately after
stopping it.

What would be causing this too happen. The init script appears to wait
for apache to stop properly, though I've tried adding a 30 second
delay into it after stopping Apache itself. If I run

/etc/init.d/apache2 stop && /etc/init.d/apache2 start

that works fine, and if Apache gets stopped in one init cycle, it
comes back up fine if I manually start it again straight afterwards.

The platform is Ubuntu 10.04, the target website is Ruby on Rails via
Passenger, with a PreStart option to ensure the app spins up
immediately. The only unusual option for this setup is the use of an
SSL url instead of plain http.

Thanks

Jeremy