DirectAdmin unable to start - PLEASE HELP!

A

aobh

Verified User
Joined
Feb 28, 2014
Messages
19
Hi,

I am in dire need. Since 5 hours ago my server was not accessible via port 443/80. All other services just run fine (like dovecot etc). I checked if Apache was running and this was fine. I disabled CSF thinking this might be the cause, but still I was not able to reach any hosted websites. I did a rebuild of Apache and PHP and still my websites were not available. I tried logging into directadmin via website and that worked fine. But once I was busy all of a sudden I got an error the the license was being used on several servers? Since then is has been going downhill.

I also noticed that DA was updated to a new version during the night v1.681 (but I already was on v1.681)?

I am not able able to start directadmin anymore because it constantly crashes.

Because of this I get an error from the license server (too many request try later). I also get: open data/admin/runtime.directadmin.conf: no such file or directory

I checked the owner rights and only system.db was owned by root. So I changed it via:

chown -R diradmin:diradmin /usr/local/directadmin/data/admin
chmod -R 600 /usr/local/directadmin/data/admin/*
chmod 755 /usr/local/directadmin/data/admin

Still did not work. Maybe it was a memory issue, but that also was not the case. I still have enough memory left.

I thought maybe the executable directadmin was corrupt. So I restored the directadmin file from yesterday. Still no difference.

I tried to do a rebuild of directadmin but that does not work because it constantly says i am at the latest build. I also changed options.conf where I mentioned directadmin=1.68.0 for instance. And I still get message that I am on latest build (1.681).

I just compared the directadmin files from yesterday and today (after autoupdate) and the size is different. I copies back the directadmin file from yesterday and then started directadmin again with Debug. Now I am getting: runtime/cgo: pthread_create failed: resource temporarily unavailable. and then Legacy_handler exited with error error=exit status 2. After that open data/admin/runtime.directadmin.conf: no such file or directory.

I checked storage and memory and still have enough available (3 gig memory and

Can somebody please help?

Thanks in advance!

Greetings,
Michiel
 
Last edited:
Hello Michiel,

What OS do you run there? What do you see when run?

Bash: 
php -v

Bash: 
apachectl -t

p.s. You might hire some guys from these forums including me if you need a fast fix
 
He Alex,

Thanks for the quick reply. I dont think its related to apache or php but because I auto updated DirectAdmin which happened at 00:00 and 10 minutes later the websites went down.

PHP 8.1.33 (cli) (built: Aug 21 2025 03:57:43) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.1.33, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
with the ionCube PHP Loader v14.4.1, Copyright (c) 2002-2025, by ionCube Ltd.
with Zend OPcache v8.1.33, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

and

Syntax OK

Would be great if I can hire you. I have been working on this for couple of hours but cant seem to fix it.

Greetings,
Michiel
 
Michiel

aobh said:
I dont think its related to apache or php but because I auto updated DirectAdmin which happened at 00:00 and 10 minutes later the websites went down.
Click to expand...

You reported two issues: 1) with sites, 2) with directadmin

I see PHP is fine and Apache as well. Are your sites are online already? Are apache/php-fpm running at all?

Bash: 
ps aux | grep -Ei "httpd|php"
 
Hi Alex,

I am using Debian 12.

Because directadmin does not work, then the websites also dont work i guess?

08:26:32 [root@waa1:~]# ps aux | grep -Ei "httpd|php"
root 2726 0.0 0.4 69792 26100 ? Ss 05:38 0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
apache 2816 0.0 0.3 531164 16140 ? Sl 05:38 0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
apache 2817 0.0 0.2 210692 15712 ? Sl 05:38 0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
root 63695 0.0 0.6 151832 32520 ? Ss 06:41 0:00 php-fpm: master process (/usr/local/php56/etc/php-fpm.conf)
root 63708 0.0 0.5 218804 29312 ? Ss 06:41 0:00 php-fpm: master process (/usr/local/php74/etc/php-fpm.conf)
root 63816 0.0 0.5 221820 30276 ? Ss 06:41 0:00 php-fpm: master process (/usr/local/php81/etc/php-fpm.conf)
root 77466 0.0 0.0 3356 632 pts/0 S+ 08:34 0:00 grep -Ei httpd|php
 
I hired zEitEr to help me. He did quit a lot, but changing the TasksMax limit helped. Still weird that this server has been running for years like this and now needs to change this setting. But thanks to zEitEr / Alex my customers are happy again ;-)
 
aobh said:
I hired zEitEr to help me. He did quit a lot, but changing the TasksMax limit helped. Still weird that this server has been running for years like this and now needs to change this setting. But thanks to zEitEr / Alex my customers are happy again ;-)
Click to expand...
Glad you got this fixed. @zEitEr is amazing. The amount of times I see him post on this group helping other DA SysAdmins is amazing!

Just a footnote, you might want to look at increasing the storage and memory. I was skirting very close to the limit with Disk Space one time as i'd misconfigured the backups and they were backing up to the / partition on the main drive instead of the mountpoint i'd created for another drive. Only had a few gig left and then as a result of this, MySQL/MariaDB refused to load and this then dominoed onto users WP installations not working. Easy fix by moving the backups and resetting server, but bear storage in mind if you have other users relying on you.
 
Ohm J said:
@johannes
O

Post in thread 'Resource temporarily unavailable: AH00480: apr_thread_create: unable to create worker thread'

Ok look like it relate to OS Limits

could you try increase limit from service eg.

Code: 
systemctl set-property apache2.service TasksMax=infinity

Im not ubuntu user, I can't help any more

but I can point it to relate to "ulimit" -> npoc { soft, hard }
  • Like
Click to expand...
Just an observation: Isn't it supposed to be httpd.service in DA, and not apache2.service ?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top