Catching HTTPD Crashes and Remote Restarts

[Jeren]

So, here's my question (or set of questions). Whats the most efficient way of catching when there is an httpd problem? Not overly often, but once in a while, my server will stop responding to HTTP requests. I'll just go in, restart apache via WHM and everything is fine again.

Sometimes I get emails of the system restarting it automatically. However, how often does it check before it tries a restart?

Is there a better alerting system that could even send a message to a phone, perhaps?

Also, does WHM work well on phones? If I'm not near a computer and learn of some downtime, would it still be possible to go in and restart apache via a cell phone if necessary?

I'm just throwing out questions. Any and all answers and responses are welcome.

 

[khiltd]

All the various admin contact settings are in Basic cPanel/WHM Setup. Doesn't do text messaging, but it'll ring a pager or AIM/ICQ you. I have my doubts that any portion of cPanel has ever been tested on handheld devices, so an iPhone would probably be the only thing that could render it coherently.

The restarts are more or less immediate, but if you have a runaway script that's bogging down the server and takes a while to actually crash anything then that would have to be addressed in the script itself.