Startup problems with php-fpm and ldap user backend on Debian

Startup problems with php-fpm and ldap user backend on Debian

Do you use php-fpm together with an ldap backend for user authentication, then you probably have seen this message in your boot logs:

[26-Sep-2019 14:58:34] ERROR: [pool XXXXXX] cannot get uid for user 'XXXXXXXX'

When using the php5.6-fpm / php7.x-fpm versions of the PHP fpm process can cause startup problems, when the users are provided via the nslcd service.

The reason is, that the ldap user backend is starting after the php fpm process(es)

Fortunately this is easy to solve, just edit your /etc/init.d/php7.3-fpm init script and add the user backend service(s) to the Required-Start section

It looks like this:
# Required-Start:    $remote_fs $network

So to add nslcd (and recommended nscd too) results in this line

# Required-Start:    $remote_fs $network nslcd nscd


To enable the new dependencies of your service starts, just disable the service and reenable it.

systemctl disable php7.3-fpm 
systemctl enable php7.3-fpm

After this, you can reboot your server and the fpm processes should startup just fine