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

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:

Connect to the server via SSH
Download the script from the attachment:

# wget https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/360036548654/cleanup_systemd_sessions.tar.gz
Extract the archive:

# tar -zxvf cleanup_systemd_sessions.tar.gz
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.

cleanup_systemd_sessions.tar.gz
518 Bytes Download

#!/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

Comments

6 comments

Abraham Joseph April 17, 2018 05:44

Hi,

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

Thanks!

0

Alexandr Tumanov April 18, 2018 05:45

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

This bug is not fixed yet.

0

Ansgar Smith February 09, 2019 09:45

@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!

0

Anzhelika Khapaknysh February 11, 2019 09:21 (Edited February 11, 2019 09:23)

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.

0

Websavers Inc May 05, 2019 00:06
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
```
0

Maxim Krasikov May 07, 2019 03:53

Hello @Websavers Inc !

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

The article has been updated.

0

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