Got the same issue on Centos7, when launching by systemctl. systemctl status ambari-server ..... Sep 17 13:02:15 sr1 systemd[1]: Starting LSB: ambari-server daemon... Sep 17 13:02:15 sr1 ambari-server[1339]: Need python version > 2.6 Sep 17 13:02:15 sr1 systemd[1]: ambari-server.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1 But, /etc/init.d/ambari-server starts works fine! I fixed it by patching ambari-server file: Replace: export ROOT=`dirname $(dirname $SCRIPT_DIR)` ROOT=`echo $ROOT | sed 's/\/$//'` by export ROOT='/' I don't know what this ROOT variable is intended for, but in my case, it was set to '/etc' when launching by systemctl. This will of course break the launched process TRICK: Just add env >/tmp/env.txt at appropriate place in ambari-server file. And you will get PATH=/etc/usr/lib/ambari-server/*:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin/:/usr/sbin PWD=/ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 AMBARI_CONF_DIR=/etc/etc/ambari-server/conf ROOT=/etc AMBARI_PASSPHRASE=DEV SHLVL=1 PYTHON= _=/usr/bin/env Which is obviously wrong.... Hope this will help ... View more