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Failed to start ghost.service: Unit ghost.service not found.

Posted October 7, 2016 39.4k views
GhostUbuntu 16.04

Hi,

Ubuntu 16 showed me that there was some update, so I updated it. Now whenever I am trying to start the Ghost service I get “Failed to start ghost.service: Unit ghost.service not found.”

But when I go to Ghost folder and “npm start –production” it, it works.

Any idea how to get the “sudo service ghost start” working?

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akshaybabloo
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2 comments
  • ryanpq October 7, 2016
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    Can you clarify a bit. Were you using the Ghost one-click based on Ubuntu 14.04 and upgraded it to ubuntu 16.04? Did you install Ghost manually on a 16.04 droplet and if so, what steps did you follow to do so?

  • akshaybabloo October 7, 2016
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    I think I resolved it. Something must have happened while updating the package. All I had to do was sudo dpkg –configure -a. Then it was up and running.

    Just to answer your question I used Ubuntu 16.04 Ghost one-click to make the droplet (5 months ago I guess). Then I got a notification - New release ‘16.04.1 LTS’ available - So I did - do-release-upgrade - to upgrade it. Then my laptop got disconnected from Digitalocean, so I reconnected then everything was normal. Then I tried all the stuff what I told you already in the question above.

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1 answer
heffebaycay October 16, 2016

I encountered the same problem after upgrading my droplet to Ubuntu 16. I solved it by adding a systemd service configuration for ghost.

I created the following file: /lib/systemd/system/ghost.service

With this content

[Unit]
Description=Ghost: Just a blogging platform
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/ghost
User=ghost
Group=ghost
ExecStart=/usr/bin/npm start --production
ExecStop=/usr/bin/npm stop --production
Restart=always
SyslogIdentifier=Ghost

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

This is based on the following systemd script: https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost-Config/blob/master/systemd/ghost.service

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  • echenley December 6, 2016

    Thanks for this. I had also just upgraded to Ubuntu 16 and can confirm that this works.

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  • robertwang January 12, 2017

    I added this file as you mentioned. But I cant start service…

    ● ghost.service - Ghost blog system for robertwang.tw
    Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/ghost.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
    Active: inactive (dead) (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2017-01-12 10:15:07 EST; 2s ago
    Process: 2440 ExecStop=/usr/bin/npm stop –production (code=exited, status=217/USER)
    Process: 2438 ExecStart=/usr/bin/npm start –production (code=exited, status=217/USER)
    Main PID: 2438 (code=exited, status=217/USER)

    Jan 12 10:15:07 Rob-Ghost systemd[1]: ghost.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
    Jan 12 10:15:07 Rob-Ghost systemd[1]: Stopped Ghost blog system for robertwang.tw.
    Jan 12 10:15:07 Rob-Ghost systemd[1]: ghost.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
    Jan 12 10:15:07 Rob-Ghost systemd[1]: Failed to start Ghost blog system for robertwang.tw.

    Not sure what that means. Could you give me some hints?

    Reply Report
    • heffebaycay January 12, 2017

      The status code (“217/USER”) seems to indicate that the user you specified in the service declaration is not valid on your system.

      Make sure the user you put in front of “User=” exists.

      Reply Report
    • keithpjolley October 9, 2019

      The same thing happened to me (Ubuntu Server 18.04) and I fixed it by deleting the existing ghost systemd files and re-running ghost setup. Probably cruft built up from multiple (and failed) updates/upgrades. Shrug.

      (buzz 514) $ ls /lib/systemd/system/*ghost*
/lib/systemd/system/ghost_blog-example-com.service  /lib/systemd/system/ghost_localhost.service

(buzz 515) $ ls /lib/systemd/system/ghost_blog-example-com.service
/lib/systemd/system/ghost_blog-example-com.service

(buzz 516) $ sudo rm /lib/systemd/system/*ghost*

(buzz 517) $ ghost setup
...
? Do you wish to set up Systemd? Yes
✔ Creating systemd service file at /mnt/nginx/usr/share/nginx/node/ghost/system/files/ghost_blog-example-com.service
+ sudo ln -sf /mnt/nginx/usr/share/nginx/node/ghost/system/files/ghost_blog-example-com.service /lib/systemd/system/ghost_blog-example-com.service
+ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
✔ Setting up Systemd
? Do you want to start Ghost? Yes
...
+ sudo systemctl is-active ghost_blog-example-com
...
+ sudo systemctl start ghost_blog-example-com
✔ Starting Ghost
+ sudo systemctl is-enabled ghost_blog-example-com
      Reply Report
akshaybabloo October 7, 2016
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