Comment 60 for bug 1832182

another hack around this mess:

  apache2ctl -k graceful

(note the "-k")

this leads to the script not matching on "graceful", going to the "*" case instead and passing the arguments to /usr/sbin/apache2, bypassing any systemctl invocation.

Actually this is what I usually type, but not all of our scripts/crontabs/fellow admins use it.
So my mailbox is still flooded with these messages:

  Invoking 'systemctl restart apache2'.
  Use 'systemctl status apache2' for more info.