Force stop upstart job

Question

I accidentally deleted some upstart job conf (in /etc/init/). Unfortunately I didn't set any respawn limit, and those jobs are now unstoppable.

I searched online but didn't find any answers, hope I will have better luck here. Regards R

PS: I'm using ubuntu 12.04

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 01 '14 at 20:23

1

Assuming you know what files you have deleted, you can:

restore them from a backup (you have backups, right?)
if you don't have a backup, you can locate the package that provides the file using either:
```
# dpkg-query -S /path/to/file
```
(if you still have the package installed; you should, you just deleted a file from it)
```
# apt-file /path/to/file
```
(if you don't have the packaged installed anymore, for whatever reason)

You can also use the Ubuntu Packages Search web site.
Afterwards, when you know which package that file you deleted came from, you can just
```
# aptitude reinstall package
```
and the file will be there again and you will be able to stop your processes normaly.

answered Apr 01 '14 at 20:23

dawud

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Thx for your answer but it was custom made upstart conf file. – rmonjo Apr 02 '14 at 08:31
So, you don't have any other copy of it, say, in a repository somewhere? – dawud Apr 02 '14 at 09:10
They are generated by a script, I generated them back, but now way to kill them: `sudo stop my-job` answers with `my-job, start/running, process 32061` – rmonjo Apr 02 '14 at 09:27
What stops you from `SIGKILL`/`SIGTERM` them? – dawud Apr 02 '14 at 09:47
Well, they respawn :) But I actually figured it out. Restarting the job seems to reset to a coherent state. – rmonjo Apr 02 '14 at 09:59
Glad you sort it out. – dawud Apr 02 '14 at 10:05

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 01 '14 at 20:35

1

I've tried to reproduce, and as long as the service is running, upstart will know how to stop it with stop $svcname. You can see if upstart knows about it with initctl list | grep $svcname. If upstart doesn't list it, then you should be able to kill it with kill. Make sure the service doesn't have its own watchdog/parent process, though, in which case you would have to kill that instead.

answered Apr 01 '14 at 20:35

bonsaiviking

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Thx for your answer. I see my jobs in `initctl list`, but when I `sudo stop myjob`, it ends up telling me: `my-job start/running, process 23213`. – rmonjo Apr 02 '14 at 08:27

Force stop upstart job

2 Answers2