Ubuntu – Why isn’t the upstart service listed in service –status-all

For you intrepid sysadmins that find this, upstart doesn't just test the paths, it appears to test that the inode is different. This means that Hard-linking the file is out of the question too. the only way to run the same binary multiple times is to make multiple copies.

Check out my question on askubuntu.com about the same thing:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/3126/upstart-supervised-init-script-for-apache

In the example you posted, it would come down to directly executing the apache binary vs. executing the apache2ctl script. Upstart expects the process it starts to not die immediately, basically; which is exactly what apache2ctl does.

There's a working Apache upstart script on my askubuntu.com question.