Comment 53 for bug 406397

Nice tip MarcS. That is indeed better than the other workarounds.

Here, a quick script -- cleanup-upstart.sh -- that checks initctl list for stalled processes and kills them:

#!/bin/sh
# vim: set ts=8 sw=4 sts=4 et ai tw=71:

upstart_spawn_and_stop() {
    name=$1
    pid=$2

    pkill -xf 'sleep 11' && echo "killed old sleep process"
    echo $((pid-2)) |
        sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/ns_last_pid >/dev/null &&
        sh -c 'sleep 11 &'
    sleeppid=`pgrep -xf 'sleep 11'`
    if test "$sleeppid" != "$pid"; then
            echo "looks like we did not get the right pid.."
            return 1
    fi
    parentpid=`ps -o%P -p$pid | sed -e1d`
    if test "$parentpid" -eq 1; then
            echo "very well.. we've got a live pid"
    else
            echo "looks like it got the wrong parent.. started from X?"
            return 1
    fi
    return 0
}

pkill -xf 'sleep 11' && echo "killed old sleep process"
initctl list | tac | while read line; do
    procpid=`echo $line | awk '{print $4}'`
    if ! test -d /proc/$procpid; then
        procname=`echo $line | awk '{print $1}'`
        echo "$procname:"
        if upstart_spawn_and_stop $procname $procpid; then
            initctl status $name
            initctl stop $name # "Terminated"?
        fi
    fi
done