Easyapache completely deletes running Apache instance?!?!?!

What the christ is going on, I've done this 20 times and it's been fine, but this time Easyapache has COMPLETELY DELETED the currently running Apache!

# /etc/init.d/httpd start
/etc/init.d/httpd: line 100: /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd: No such file or directory

Can someone please tell me what the hell it is doing killing the live Apache instance? Now my customers are sitting around with their thumbs up their arses for half an hour while the thing compiles the new one - which is MEANT to be happening in the background!

 

Yeah I'm pretty sure I didn't, seeing as I was using the web interface rather than the shell, and that I've never done anything of the sort in about 15 years of *nix administration

It's still going... 45 minutes in. It'll finish soon but the customers are obviously getting extremely pissy about all this. I can't for the life of me believe this has happened, how could there ever be a way it would do this? What sort of mechanism is there via which to (a) work out what went wrong, and (b) ensure it never happens again? Should I be raising a ticket somewhere or something? This is a pretty serious failure!

 

Right, so why did my httpd die the minute I started Easyapache? I didn't try the httpd restart until after I noticed it was no longer running. I'm serious about this guys, I'll be taking it up with my cpanel provider and/or directly with cpanel support, I *need* an answer on this one, I can't afford for it to happen again.