What to do when your Apache web server is down...

When a customer alerts you that their web site is down and you check it out and are greeted with an Apache error message. I am using Apache 2.2.22.

Forbidden. You do not have permission to access / on this server.

Take these steps.

1. Stay calm
2. Remote into the server in question.
3. Restart the Apache service.  
4. Check the website.
5. If its still down, check your httpd.conf file, ensure it was not hacked
6. If something looks funny, move your backup http.conf file into place. (I now have one)
7. Restart the Apache service again.
8. Check the web server.
9. Since my server is hosting multiple instances, check the httpd-vhosts.conf file
10. If it looks funny, move your backup httpd-vhost.conf file into place
11. Restart the Apache service
12. If the web server is still not up, try rebooting.
13. Check the Apache error log for details.

In the case of a moodle instance on a Apache web server, you can also check the other two critical services
Mysql.exe and WAMP.exe.

Once the server is back up, check the Apache error logs. 

Mine shows this error

[Sun Apr 28 15:17:49 2013] [warn] (OS 10055)An operation on a socket could not be performed because the system lacked sufficient buffer space or because a queue was full.  : winnt_accept: Failed to allocate an accept socket. Temporary resource constraint? Try again.

This messsage was written about every 2-3 minutes over the course of 24 hrs.  I do not know what caused it but will continue to see if I can find anything that may help prevent this from happening in the future.

I am great full that I have 3 separate moodle servers.  In this case, only the moodle instances on one of the servers was effected.