xubuntu 14.04 service start,stop, does not work in terminal emulation

[awol]

xubuntu from installer-amd64/20101020ubuntu313 terminal emulation can not change service status.

e.g.

> service smbd restart
stop: Unknown job: smbd
start: Unknown job: smbd

however on tty1 this works as expected. i.e. the smbd is stopped then started again with a process number given in output.

[Joao S Veiga (jsveiga-it)]

After much banging my head and googling, I've found a post (http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/120050/sudo-service-vsftpd-returns-unknown-job-vsftpd) showing that

"sudo service xxxx start" (or stop, or restart)

works, while

"service xxxx start" (in a su session)

does not work.

So the culprit was clearly the environment: If you go root with "su" instead of "sudo su" or "su -", "service" does not to work correctly either, as "su" will carry most of your normal user environment to the root session.

After some testings, I found that the culprit is the UPSTART_SESSION environment variable, which comes set when you "su", but not set when you "sudo su" or "su -". Here are some test results:

-- does not work
jsveiga@dell:~$ su
Password:
root@dell:/home/jsveiga# service smbd restart
stop: Unknown job: smbd
start: Unknown job: smbd

-- works even from a su session
root@dell:/home/jsveiga# sudo service smbd restart
smbd stop/waiting
smbd start/running, process 3823

-- works
root@dell:/home/jsveiga# exit
jsveiga@dell:~$ sudo su
root@dell:/home/jsveiga# service smbd restart
smbd stop/waiting
smbd start/running, process 3862

-- works
root@dell:/home/jsveiga# exit
jsveiga@dell:~$ su -
Password:
root@dell:~# service smbd restart
smbd stop/waiting
smbd start/running, process 3905

-- going su then unsetting the UPSTART_SESSION works
root@dell:/home/jsveiga# exit
jsveiga@dell:~$ su
Password:
root@dell:/home/jsveiga# service smbd restart
stop: Unknown job: smbd
start: Unknown job: smbd
root@dell:/home/jsveiga# unset UPSTART_SESSION
root@dell:/home/jsveiga# service smbd restart
smbd stop/waiting
smbd start/running, process 4244

So the start/stop scripts are failing somehow simply by the presence of the UPSTART_SESSION environment variable.

BR,
Joao S Veiga

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[ChillyWilly (ubuntu-vzuijlekom)]

Confirmed on two of my systems, both are upgrades from 12.04.

[xylo (stefan-endrullis)]

Thanks a lot for your hint, Joao S Veiga! With sudo it works. :)

[majordom (majordom-s)]

Thanx. Confirmed with two fresh installed ubuntu 14.04. Hope you'll fix it

[Ahmad Bin Musa (ahmadbinmusa)]

# su
# sudo su
# service squid3 stop
stop: Unknown instance:
root@ahmad-HP-ProBook-450-G1:~#

[babak (bk-ravandi)]

Thanks. I was so confused till I found this. Confirmed with:

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

[David Coronel (davecore)]

I just hit this bug with a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04.4 Desktop.

Inside Unity, I open a terminal and if I do "service ssh status" I get:
status: Unknown job: ssh

But if I ssh to that box with the same user, the same command works fine.

The workarounds are to do "sudo service ssh status" or to do "unset UPSTART_SESSION" before doing "service ssh status".

Can anyone look at this?