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

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:

  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

  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…