Message: Systemd process manager has not been set up or is corrupted

Developer help
1

Hello there, when I attempt to start my blog I get this error, and I haven’t had this problem before and can’t find anything online. Could someone please help me with this? I would be more then appreciative.

star@schoolfactsonline:/var/www/blog$ sudo ghost start
It looks like Ghost was installed using the root user.
You need to create a user with regular account privileges and migrate your installation to this user.
There’s a guide to fixing your setup here

Love open source? We’re hiring Node.js Engineers to work on Ghost full-time.

  • sudo systemctl is-active ghost_blog-schoolfactsonline-com
    :heavy_check_mark: Checking system Node.js version - found v16.13.0
    :heavy_check_mark: Ensuring user is not logged in as ghost user
    :heavy_check_mark: Checking if logged in user is directory owner
    :heavy_check_mark: Checking current folder permissions
  • sudo systemctl is-active ghost_blog-schoolfactsonline-com
    :heavy_check_mark: Validating config
    :heavy_check_mark: Checking folder permissions
    :heavy_check_mark: Checking file permissions
    :heavy_check_mark: Checking memory availability
    :heavy_check_mark: Checking binary dependencies
    :heavy_check_mark: Checking systemd unit file
    Warning: Ghost is running with node v14.19.3.
    Your current node version is v16.13.0.
    :heavy_check_mark: Checking systemd node version - found v14.19.3
    :heavy_multiplication_x: Starting Ghost: blog-schoolfactsonline-com
    A SystemError occurred.

Message: Systemd process manager has not been set up or is corrupted.
Help: Run ghost setup linux-user systemd and try again.

Debug Information:
OS: Ubuntu, v20.04.4 LTS
Node Version: v16.13.0
Ghost Version: 4.39.0
Ghost-CLI Version: 1.19.3
Environment: production
Command: ‘ghost start’

Try running ghost doctor to check your system for known issues.

You can always refer to Ghost-CLI - A fully loaded tool for installation and configuration for troubleshooting.
star@schoolfactsonline:/var/www/blog$

Attempting to run the command listed does nothing:

star@schoolfactsonline:/var/www/blog$ ghost setup linux-user systemd
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│Warning: MySQL 8 will be the required database in the next major release of Ghost.│
│ Make sure your database is up to date to ensure forwards compatibility. │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Love open source? We’re hiring Node.js Engineers to work on Ghost full-time.

Systemd service has already been set up. Skipping Systemd setup
:information_source: Setting up Systemd [skipped]

2

There are messages pointing to the issue…

Have you performed the last command? I suspect there are two issues at play: you used sudo when installing Ghost, and you haven’t setup MySQL correctly. BTW, use MySQL not MariaDB.

3

Greetings,

When I run the last command I get this error:

Systemd service has already been set up. Skipping Systemd setup
:information_source: Setting up Systemd [skipped]

If I can’t figure this out, my plan was to just reinstall ghost unless this is a simple fix. I’ve already had multiple issues updating ghost.

4

Greetings,

I have reinstalled ghost and got things working perfectly fine. Sorry for the hassle.

5

I wasn’t in a position to reinstall, I managed to fix this by manually changing the settings to something that worked:

  1. Within your ghost website folder, run ls -l to see the folder settings
  2. Run sudo chown ghost-mgr <folder-name> or sudo chown ghost <folder-name> until you are able to do the commands

Sample settings that worked for me:

-rw-rw-r--  1 ghost-mgr root       799 Jun 20 12:56 config.production.json
drwxrwxr-x 11 ghost     ghost     4096 Jun 20 03:15 content
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ghost-mgr ghost-mgr   29 Jun 20 03:19 current -> /[redacted]/versions/5.2.3
drwxr-xr-x  3 ghost-mgr root      4096 Jun 20 03:20 system
drwxrwxr-x  3 ghost-mgr ghost-mgr 4096 Jun 20 03:15 versions
5 Likes
6

The issue was indeed incorrect permissions on the content directory in my case (has to be owned by ghost). What sucks is that ghost doctor doesn’t seem to catch that, though…

3 Likes
7

Incidentally, this can happen if the active theme file is uploaded with the wrong permissions.

2 Likes
8

This solved my issue, Thx

2 Likes
9

Just adding a note for what worked for me:

I also uploaded the part of the content folder from my local computer to ghost instance, and also uploaded a theme zip

After checking permissions in this post, I still couldn’t run ghost stop because I’d get the same message about systemd

So I ran ghost setup, then ghost stop, and ghost start and now ghost is back up.

1 Like
10

Thanks, big help, It worked like a charm

1 Like
11

Check out this amazing blog, took few minutes and ghost restart is working now.

2 Likes
12

Different error messages and back and forth but the clue was to change the owner of the “content” folder. Ghost update went like a charm now.