Apache problem

[webmusic]

At least once per day apache stops serving pages. When I go to start apache, it says it's already running. When I try to stop with command shell, it says it's already stopped. I have to reboot the server, and then start apache for it to work. Any ideas? Apache 2.2.22 and Gentoo Linux. Recently upgraded from an older Gentoo version, but have since had many problems with file permissions, paths, etc....

[gabrielg]

So many things...
Did you run a ps to see if apache is actually running?
What does "stop serving requests" mean? 500? 404? timeout?
Did you see anything in the logs? Especially the error logs?
Are you hosting good old static pages or are you using PHP and the like?