Issue Deleting FTP user from Plesk interface failure

[gennolo]

I am on Centos 7.2 / Plesk 12.5 box

I often create restricted FTP users related to domains to let customers doing stuff on website without viewing the actual websites.

It happens sometimes that when I try to delete those FTP accounts from Domains -> FTP Accounts
I got an error message saying that that "user cannot be deleted because being used by a process".

This operation lead to a Plesk inconsistency because :

- The user is equally removed from Plesk FTP users database (it is not listed anymore after first deletion)
- The user is still able to do FTP connections and of course is not removed from etc/passwd

Doing a manual shell # userdel xxxx
return me the same error :

userdel: user xxxx is currently used by process 1433

Doing ps auxf | grep 1433
1433 12.8 2.0 597776 80680 ? R 11:12 0:12 | \_ /opt/plesk/php/5.6/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/system/domain_name.tld/etc/php.ini

So it appears that PHP is locking the created FTP users in some way.

How to deal with it ? How can I safely remove those users without restarting PHP / webserver ?

 

[IgorG]

I think this problem is addressed in the following KB - https://kb.plesk.com/en/128570

 

[gennolo]

Thank you for your prompt reply.

I followed the KB to remove the orphaned entries from PSA database - But I still encounter the user lock when it comes to do last step

# userdel xxxxx
userdel: user xxxx is currently used by process 5146

Therefore I cannot remove the user from the system as indicated.

Do I have to forcefully stop all php-fpm subscription related process (causing potential services downtime)
in order to proper delete the user ?

No other workarounds ?

 

[IgorG]

I think that you can kill corresponding processes which can be found with

# ps aux | grep php-fpm

for FTP user deletion properly. And just wait when mentioned PPPM-4225 will be fixed in the one of nearest updates.

 

[gennolo]

IgorG : Everytime I try to kill the process, another one is spawning preventing me to deleting the user :

# userdel xxxxxx
userdel: user xxxxxx is currently used by process 48083
# kill 48083
# userdel xxxxxx
userdel: user xxxxxx is currently used by process 48084
# kill 48084
# userdel xxxxxx
userdel: user xxxxxx is currently used by process 48086
# kill 48086
# userdel xxxxxx
userdel: user xxxxxx is currently used by process 48090

An addition : after additional investigation , the involved subscription is using php-cgi (no fpm at all) so the scenario described in https://kb.plesk.com/en/128570 is not my case.
In fact the "locking" respawning process is -> /opt/plesk/php/5.6/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/system/domain_name.tld/etc/php.ini