Failed to stop httpd.service: Failed to activate service ‘org.freedesktop.systemd1’: timed out

One of our production servers started throwing this error whenever we tried to start/stop/restart a service. Heck, even issuing reboot would return a similar error.

Failed to stop httpd.service: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1': timed out

The only thing that worked, in the end, was to forcefully reboot the server. Issue the following at terminal to do so:

reboot -f

Since the error references systemd we recommend updating it to see if a fix for this was released.

Issue the following to update systemd and it’s dependencies at the terminal window:

yum update systemd