Cannot apply PHP Settings or PHP service is down: cannot get uid for user ‘john.doe’

Symptoms

• Unable to apply PHP Settings:

  Error: phpinimng failed: configuration test '['/opt/plesk/php/8.2/sbin/php-fpm', '--test']' failed with code 78, and message:
  ERROR: [pool example.com] cannot get uid for user 'john.doe'
  ERROR: FPM initialization failed

• One or more PHP-FPM service(s) is down and cannot be started with the following errors at the end of journalctl -u plesk-php82-fpm.service output:

  ERROR: [pool example.com] cannot get uid for user 'john.doe'
  ERROR: FPM initialization failed

• Under /var/log/plesk-php**-fpm/error.logyou see the following:

  ERROR: [pool example.com] cannot get uid for user 'john.doe'
  ERROR: FPM initialization failed

Cause

System user of subscription(s) was renamed or removed.

Resolution

1. Connect to the server via SSH.

2. Find the absent user(s) mentioned in PHP-FPM pool configurations:

   # grep user * /opt/plesk/php/*/etc/php-fpm.d | cut -d= -f2 | tr -d ' ' | while read -r user; do id "$user" >/dev/null; done
   id: john.doe: no such user
   id: jane.doe: no such user

3. Find the configuration files with these mentions:

   # grep -rin 'john.doe|jane.doe' /opt/plesk/php/*/etc/php-fpm.d
   ...
   /opt/plesk/php/8.1/etc/php-fpm.d/example.com.conf:11:[example.com]
   ..
   /opt/plesk/php/8.2/etc/php-fpm.d/example.net.conf:11:[example.net]
   ...

4. Create a backup of the file to be safe:
   # cp -p /opt/plesk/php/8.2/etc/php-fpm.d/example.com.conf /opt/plesk/php/8.2/etc/php-fpm.d/example.com.conf.bak

5. Remove the found files:

   # rm -rf /opt/plesk/php/8.1/etc/php-fpm.d/example.com.conf /opt/plesk/php/8.2/etc/php-fpm.d/example.net.conf

6. Log in to Plesk.

7. For each domain, go to Domains > example.com > PHP Settings, change some setting and click Apply to recreate configuration file. Revert the setting, if necessary.

   Note: if there are too many domains, run the following to update the settings for all domains at once (might be a long process):

   # plesk bin php_settings -u

Note: In case that the issue persists try running the repair command for each affected domain like plesk repair web -y example.com