How to fix “Stopping Apache…fail. apachectl returned 1.” on XAMPP Linux

When stopping xampp service (apache) with a command like below on a linux operating system:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp stop

I get an error like below:

XAMPP: Stopping Apache...fail.
apachectl returned 1.
XAMPP: Stopping MySQL...not running.
XAMPP: Stopping ProFTPD...not running.

To fix it, try the following methods:

sudo rm -f /opt/lampp/logs/httpd.pid

The rm command stands for “remove” and the -f option will “force” delete files without regard to permissions and will also ignore non-existent files.

Then try stopping the xampp service again.

References:
Adeye Wordpress
LinuxTechi