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Plesk fails to restart services: control script doesn't exist or isn't executable

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Marc Vidal
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Applicable to:

  • Plesk Onyx for Linux

Symptoms

  • The following error is shown in Plesk UI:

    PLESK_ERROR: New configuration flies for the Apache web server were not created due to the errors in configuration templates: Can not restart web server: INFO: : Service: httpd. Action: stop Trying to stop service httpd... WARNING! Some problems are found during attempt to stop service httpd - control script doesn’t exist or isn't executable(see log file: /var/log/plesk/rc_actions.log) Continue... INFO:: Service: httpd. Action: stop Trying to stop service httpd... WARNING! Some problems are found during attempt to stop service httpd - control script doesn't exist or isn’t executable(see log file:

  • The output of the top utility shows that the systemd process consumes up to 100% CPU.

  • There are a lot of abandoned systemd scope units on the server:

    # systemctl | grep abandoned | wc -l
    293

  • The following entries can be found in /var/log/plesk/panel.log and also in /var/log/httpd/error_log:

    CONFIG_TEXT: INFO: : Service: httpd, Action: start
    Trying to start service httpd...
    WARNING!
    Some problems are found during attempt to start service httpd - control script doesn't exist or isn't executable(see log file: /var/log/plesk/rc_actions.log)
    Continue...
    example.com systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
    example.com httpd[16900]: [so:warn] [pid 16900:tid 3507090413696] AH01574: module unique_id_module is already loaded, skipping
    example.com systemd[1]: Started The Apache HTTP Server.
    example.com systemd[1]: httpd.service: main process exited, code=killed, status=9/KILL
    example.com kill[17101]: kill: cannot find process ""
    example.com systemd[1]: httpd.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
    example.com systemd[1]: Unit httpd.service entered failed state.
    example.com systemd[1]: httpd.service failed.
    example.com systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
    WARNING!
    Some problems are found during start service httpd(see log file: /var/log/plesk/rc_actions.log)

    OR

    CONFIG_TEXT: example.com systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
    example.com httpd[16900]: [so:warn] [pid 16900:tid 3507090413696] AH01574: module unique_id_module is already
    loaded, skipping
    example.com systemd[1]: Started The Apache HTTP Server.
    WARNING!
    Some problems are found during stop service httpd(see log file: /var/log/plesk/rc_actions.log)
    Continue..
    STOP pleskrc
    START pleskrc
    INFO: : Service: httpd, Action: status
    WARNING!
    Some problems are found during attempt to status service httpd - control script doesn't exist or isn't executable(see log file: /var/log/plesk/rc_actions.log)

Possible consequences

  • Service plan synchronization takes a lot of time or fails with the following error message:

    PLESK_ERROR: Unable to sync subscriptions with the service plan

  • Operations like mailbox creation or changing domain's configuration take more time than expected.

  • Accessing different Plesk pages takes more time than expected, for example, WordPress, Webserver Configuration Troubleshooter, etc.

  • When a domain is created, Apache stops and fails to restart.

  • Let's Encrypt daily cronjob also causes Apache to stop.

  • The server is slow, web-server constantly crashes.

  • Apache hangs on attempt to perform a migration.

  • systemd fails with:

    # time /bin/systemctl list-unit-files
    Failed to list unit files: Connection timed out

  • Service status checker takes more time than it takes after a server reboot:

    # time plesk sbin apache_control_adapter --status
    is running
    real 0m9.803s
    user 0m0.038s
    sys 0m0.036s

Cause

Session files are not deleted due to systemd bug:

Plesk bug with ID PPPM-7414 has been created in order to track the issue.

Resolution

As a workaround, create a scheduled task which will stop abandoned units:

  1. Connect to the server via SSH

  2. Download the script from the attachment:

    # wget https://plesk.zendesk.com/hc/article_attachments/360044074594/cleanup_systemd_sessions.zip

  3. Extract the archive:

    # unzip cleanup_systemd_sessions.zip

  4. Create a cron task that will execute this script every hour:

    4.1. Open the crontab editor:

    # crontab -e

    4.2. Add the content below at the end of the file, for example:

    CONFIG_TEXT: 0 * * * * /root/cleanup_systemd_sessions.sh

    4.3. Save the changes and close the file.

Comments

6 comments

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  • Avatar
    Abraham Joseph

    Hi, 

    How to find the details of this bug - #PPPM-7414? I  mean, latest updates?

    Thanks!

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  • Avatar
    Alexandr Tumanov

    @Abraham, bugfixes are listed in Plesk ChangeLog: https://docs.plesk.com/release-notes/onyx/change-log/ 

    This bug is not fixed yet.

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  • Avatar
    Ansgar Smith

    @Alexandr,  Any updates on this issue? It's causing outages with new Plesk installations, though the temprorary fix works good for us. Would be good if it's fixed permanently

    Thank!

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  • Avatar
    Anzhelika Khapaknysh (Edited )

    Hi @Ansgar Smith,

    In general, this bug is a systemd one - all OSes with systemd are affected.
    Links on the discussions are in the Cause section.

    The bug PPPM-7414 is created in order to track this issue in general.
    As the root cause is on the systemd side, Plesk cannot offer a permanent solution, but we created this workaround so our customers won't suffer from systemd bug.

    I recommend following this article, as we'll update it as soon as systemd bug is fixed.
    The Cause section has been modified in order not to confuse anymore.

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  • Avatar
    Websavers Inc

    I like that the updated version of the cleanup_systemd_sessions script actually checks to ensure the session has not been active in the last 30 minutes, but shouldn't it be starting with a list of supposedly abandoned sessions like the previous version of it did? When I run that script, it kills my active SSHd session... clearly that was not abandoned and it also definitely was active in the last 30 minutes. Here's a modified version which merges the old and the new script by ensuring we're only terminating *abandoned* sessions which have not spawned processes in the past 30 minutes (rather than terminating all sessions which have not spawned processes in the past 30 minutes):

    #!/bin/sh
    # Removes leaked session scopes (PPPM-7414) # 

    # Close only sessions which did not spawn processes for 30 minutes
    LASTTASK=30

    systemctl list-units --state=abandoned --no-legend | tr -s ' ' | cut -d' ' -f 6,9 \
    	| while read -r session username; do \
    		user=$(id -u $username)
    		tasklist="/sys/fs/cgroup/systemd/user.slice/user-${user}.slice/session-${session}.scope/tasks"
    			if [ ! -s "$tasklist" ]; then
    				if find "$tasklist" -type f -mmin +${LASTTASK} >/dev/null; then
    				echo "Closing leaked session ${session} of user ${user}"
    				loginctl terminate-session "$session" >&2
    				fi
    			fi
    done
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  • Avatar
    Maxim Krasikov

    Hello @Websavers Inc !

    Thank you for paying our attention to it and providing the modified script.

    The article has been updated.

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