When running sympl on debian 13 with PHP-FPM 7* the server replies with a 503 Service unavailable. Currently (at time of post) the sympl.io website is also down with the same error.
Any Error Messages
rt php7.4-fpm.service - The PHP 7.4 FastCGI Process Manager.
May 10 20:10:07 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: php7.4-fpm.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 3.
May 10 20:10:07 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: Starting php7.4-fpm.service - The PHP 7.4 FastCGI Process Manager...
May 10 20:10:07 hosting.***.co.uk php-fpm7.4[2697]: [10-May-2026 20:10:07] ERROR: unable to bind listening socket for address '/etc/sympl/php/7.4/default.sock': Read-only file system (30)
May 10 20:10:07 hosting.***.co.uk php-fpm7.4[2697]: [10-May-2026 20:10:07] ERROR: FPM initialization failed
May 10 20:10:07 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: php7.4-fpm.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=78/CONFIG
May 10 20:10:07 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: php7.4-fpm.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 10 20:10:07 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: Failed to start php7.4-fpm.service - The PHP 7.4 FastCGI Process Manager.
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: php7.4-fpm.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 4.
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: Starting php7.4-fpm.service - The PHP 7.4 FastCGI Process Manager...
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk php-fpm7.4[2710]: [10-May-2026 20:10:08] ERROR: unable to bind listening socket for address '/etc/sympl/php/7.4/default.sock': Read-only file system (30)
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk php-fpm7.4[2710]: [10-May-2026 20:10:08] ERROR: FPM initialization failed
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: php7.4-fpm.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=78/CONFIG
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: php7.4-fpm.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: Failed to start php7.4-fpm.service - The PHP 7.4 FastCGI Process Manager.
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: php7.4-fpm.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 5.
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: php7.4-fpm.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: php7.4-fpm.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 10 20:10:08 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: Failed to start php7.4-fpm.service - The PHP 7.4 FastCGI Process Manager.
May 10 20:10:30 hosting.***.co.uk systemd[1]: php7.4-fpm.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
Linux hosting.***.co.uk 6.12.86+deb13-cloud-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.12.86-1 (2026-05-08) x86_64
System information as of 2026-05-10 20:01:46 +0000 (UTC)
The service configuration file has been modified recently, so presumably an additional configuration rolled out, which is stopping service from starting successfully.
I’m aware of this, and looking at it now, and hope to have it tracked down and have a fix later today.
Note that while the sudo/running PHP will work at the moment, it means that the PHP processes may well have permissions greater than they should, so it’s fairly dangerous.
I was affected by this too. I’ve deleted two WP plugins and manually patched two others on my only hosted site that needed PHP7.4. I thought maybe PHP7.4 would never come back as it’s over 3 years past EOL.
Note: this only applies to users who’re running alternate PHP versions in Sympl 12 and 13, those running earlier versions won’t be affected by this.
Anyone affected by this should be able to stop any manually started PHP processes, then:
sudo sympl upgrade
sudo sympl-php-configure
That should fix things up and sites should start working again.
Note that you may want to run sudo apt update ; sudo apt install sympl-web to check for any ‘broken’ packages hanging over from the problem PHP configurations.
For anyone who’s affected but only just noticed, this will get automatically installed overnight and should fix itself when it does.
Sorry for the late reply. Was testing and running on development boxes. All working as expected and the nightly update fixed the issues automatically (with your sympl update). Have now deployed to production and all looks good.
Thanks for your help with this.
Clarification required please?
I’ve just noticed that I’m receiving the following error from a Sympl 12 vm
/etc/cron.hourly/sympl-php-configure:
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
run-parts: /etc/cron.hourly/sympl-php-configure exited with return code 1
I have a couple of sites down which are using older versions of php
Reading the above suggests the following commands will address the issue
sudo apt update ; sudo apt install sympl-web
As always the devil’s in the detail so are the above commands all that’s required or do I need to stop any php processes (there was mention above but it’s not too clear) before running sudo apt update ; sudo apt install sympl-web
Since running the commands above sites running php-fpm are backonline. For info I have received the output below. Is the below anything to have concerns over?
php8.5 (8.5.6-2) experimental; urgency=medium
The systemd unit file has been hardened. Extra options from
sapi/fpm/php-fpm.service.in has been used: