[BlueOnyx:10737] httpd problems 5106

[Steffan]

Hello,

On several VPS service i got the same problem.
Not always but now it happened again.
After the night logrotate httpd dosnt get reloaden
So no logs are written and if I made a change in the siteadmin the reload
isn't doing anything

If I do a httpd reload im getting a error
service httpd reload
Reloading httpd:                                           [FAILED]

In ps aux | grep httpd   I see old processes
apache   16034  0.0  0.6 116600 33260 ?        S    Jun04   0:05
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16035  0.0  0.6 116864 33636 ?        S    Jun04   0:06
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16036  0.0  0.6 116864 33268 ?        S    Jun04   0:05
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16037  0.0  0.6 116868 34036 ?        S    Jun04   0:06
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16038  0.0  0.6 116608 33424 ?        S    Jun04   0:05
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16039  0.0  0.6 116856 33316 ?        S    Jun04   0:04
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16040  0.0  0.6 116608 33144 ?        S    Jun04   0:05
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16041  0.0  0.6 116856 33524 ?        S    Jun04   0:07
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16116  0.0  0.6 116600 33508 ?        S    Jun04   0:05
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16117  0.0  0.6 116856 33632 ?        S    Jun04   0:05
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16118  0.0  0.6 116856 33412 ?        S    Jun04   0:04
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16119  0.0  0.6 117124 33748 ?        S    Jun04   0:07
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16120  0.0  0.6 116612 33216 ?        S    Jun04   0:06
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16121  0.0  0.6 116868 33388 ?        S    Jun04   0:05
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16122  0.0  0.6 116860 33540 ?        S    Jun04   0:05
/usr/sbin/httpd
apache   16123  0.0  0.6 117004 33560 ?        S    Jun04   0:07
/usr/sbin/httpd

only option is to do
killall httpd
httpd start

any idees how this can happen ?
and how to fix