I'm getting the following error after stopping apache and trying to
start apache up again.

[root@w1 bin]# apachectl start
./apachectl: /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd: Text file busy
./apachectl start: httpd could not be started

I have linux 7.2 with mod_perl 1.26 configured and using apache
1.3.24.  When I call ./httpd directly rather than through apachectl,
it works.  What seems to be the problem?

Let me know if you need more information.

Thanks in advance.

"Text file busy" is a standard I/O error message for Error code 26. 
This error means that the program's unable to read/write from/to the
file; in your case the httpd executable or the apachectl script.  This
may be due to permissions.  This error may also occur if you have
Samba running on your system and you use it to access either of these
files.  There are more causes for this error...

When you run "./httpd" directly, you are sure the daemon is started,
right ?  You should try executing individual commands from the
"apachectl" file in the shell and try to pinpoint the exact point of
error.

See if you can do that, and we can work together to resolve this.  The
reason I posted this as a comment is because I did not have an exact
answer but can work with you to find one.

Regards,
gopalkamat-ga

oops!  hit the "Enter key" by accident...

1) we are not running samba 
2) i executed apachectl as root so there are no permissioning problem
3) when i started ./httpd directly, it started running.  i checked
this 2 ways:
a) i did a ps -ef | grep httpd and there were a bunch of processes
b) i accessed a few web pages and they were being served

what do you mean by executing individual command from the apachectl
file?  do you mean like ./apachectl restart, etc.?  i'm neither a
sysadmin nor an apache expert.