Plesk php service repair - Service Temporarily Unavailable

If you have multiple domains with different php versions on one Plesk server, every now and then problems occur due to incorrect file creation by Plesk.

Domain holders will then see an error message, for example, when they call the website like

The cause of the error

The reason for this message is in this case a not started php-fpm service, which can not restart due to a faulty file in the configuration. These files are managed by the Plesk service. Sometimes it happens that they are not deleted or not created correctly. In that case you can only independent take action and correct the problem.

Finding and correcting errors

You can easily find the mistake in such a case. Error logs are written for each service and often show the problem.

In this example you only have to go to the search for the log files of the php-fpm service. If you know the php version of the user, you can simply look up the log of the service directly. Alternatively, you can also just check all services at once and fix bugs.

Example under Centos7:

tail -f /var/log/plesk-php56-fpm/error.log

[07-Jun-2019 09:40:15] ERROR: An another FPM instance seems to already listen on /var/www/vhosts/system/ihrefirma.de/php-fpm.sock

[07-Jun-2019 09:40:15] ERROR: FPM initialization failed

This basically means that the domain ihrefirma.de was obviously loaded in a different php-fpm configuration, i.e. the php version of the domain may have been changed from php5.6 to another. In this case, Plesk has not been able to remove the original configuration file. The php-fpm service cannot be restarted.

Solution of the problem

Remove the broken file from the server's php-fpm configuration.

Example for Centos7:

rm -rf /opt/plesk/php/5.6/etc/php-fpm.d/ihrefirma.de.conf

After that you should see the successful restart directly in the error log of the defective service.

tail -f /var/log/plesk-php56-fpm/error.log

[07-Jun-2019 09:42:04] NOTICE: fpm is running, pid 120959

[07-Jun-2019 09:42:04] NOTICE: ready to handle connections

07-Jun-2019 09:42:04] NOTICE: systemd monitor interval set to 10000ms