Hopefully this will help someone. I had the same problem - and using the
“service php5-fpm restart” or “service php5-fpm start” command did not work (returned the status 78 error followed by the “php5-fpm respawning too fast, stopped” notice).

Solution was to edit the /etc/init.d/php5-fpm file and add a sleep command inside the do_start() function before it closes:

Function that starts the daemon/service

dostart()
{
# Return
# 0 if daemon has been started
# 1 if daemon was already running
# 2 if daemon could not be started
start-stop-daemon –start –quiet –pidfile $PIDFILE –exec $DAEMON –test > /dev/null \
|| return 1
start-stop-daemon –start –quiet –pidfile $PIDFILE –exec $DAEMON – \
$DAEMONARGS 2>/dev/null \
|| return 2
# Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
# to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
# on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
sleep 20
}