Unable to restart nginx via systemd because it's already running

Question

I'm trying to restart nginx, and systemd doesn't want to.

As far as I can tell, nginx is humming along just fine, and it's answering requests as expected, but systemd doesn't appear to think it's in control of the service, so I guess it tries to start a new copy, which fails because now it tries to bind to :80 which is already taken.

After some troubleshooting, I just gave up and rebooted the machine, figuring that would resolve the issue, but to my surprise that lands me back in the same state again.

The only way I can find to make systemd happy is

# killall nginx
# systemctl restart nginx.service

But I obviously don't want to rely on that. Info about my current state:

# systemctl restart nginx.service
Job for nginx.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status nginx.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

# journalctl -xe
-- Unit nginx.service has begun starting up.
Oct 22 12:12:43 shared1 nginx[4772]: nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx[4772]: nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx[4772]: nginx: [emerg] still could not bind()
systemd[1]: nginx.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=1
systemd[1]: Failed to start A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server.
-- Subject: Unit nginx.service has failed

# netstat -lpn | grep :80
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:80              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      3607/nginx

# ps fax | grep nginx
4827 pts/0    S+     0:00                          \_ grep --color=auto nginx
3607 ?        Ss     0:00 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx
3608 ?        S      0:00  \_ nginx: worker process
3609 ?        S      0:00  \_ nginx: cache manager process

# cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS \n \l

$ nginx -v
nginx version: nginx/1.10.3 (Ubuntu)

$ find /etc/systemd/ /lib/systemd/system -name nginx.service
/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/nginx.service
/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service
$ stat /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/nginx.service 2>&1 | head -n1
  File: '/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/nginx.service' -> '/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service'
$ stat /lib/systemd/system/nginx.service 2>&1 | head -n2
  File: '/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service'
  Size: 986             Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file

Solution

sudo killall apache2

To solve Job for nginx.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See systemctl status nginx.service and journalctl -xe for details.

Comments

[jpezz]

Can you stop it with "systemctl stop nginx.service".

[SoothingMist]

@jpezz Only in the sense that systemd doesn't complain about it, but the running process doesn't actually terminate if I try.

[jpezz]

You need to find out if systemd is starting it in the first place. Is nginx.service in /etc/systemd or its subdirectories? Is it in lib/systemd/system ? What versions of Ubuntu & nginx?

[SoothingMist]

@jpezz I think I have added the relevant information to the question. :)

[Newskooler]

I have the same issue. Still no solution :/

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

Can't argue with killing the process.