Hi.
I am preparing to make some configuration changes to the php.ini file.
Will I have to reboot the server before the changes will take effect?
Thanks in advance.
Yes, you will need to restart your server.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/faq.installation.php#faq.installation.findphpini
If php.ini is being read and you’re running PHP as a module, then be sure to restart your web server after making changes to php.ini
Thank you!
If you were using IIS 7.5 (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2) there is a setting that will allow one not to restart the server when changing php.ini. Otherwise, yes must restart the server.
On linux, you can do the same thing: simply restart the webserver service.
It’s important to note that there’s a difference between that and a full reboot.
If you’re using apache, you can also use ‘graceful’ (instead of restart) as that doesn’t end sessions and the like (I think).
There must be a setting that allows any php.ini changes to be picked up without a restart as otherwise shared hosting wouldn’t be able to offer the opportunity to update your php.ini as there you don’t have access to do a restart and yet changes still get picked up.
There is, what Immerse just said 
apachectl graceful
Reloads the config files, but doesn’t kill current connections.