Over the years I've developed (as I'm sure many have :)) a small home-
grown replacement for apachectl, to make start/stop/restart easier.
It's in library form, and among other things it

* detects whether the server is actually running, by contacting the port
* waits to make sure the server starts properly, and shows the error
logs if it fails
* detects and removes out-of-date httpd.pid files

Now's the perfect time to ask, is there something out there like this?
If not, does this seem useful for CPAN, as, say, Server::Control?

Jon