Similar problem on Ubuntu 16.04.
Setting up jenkins (2.72) ...
Job for jenkins.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status jenkins.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript jenkins, action "start" failed.
● jenkins.service - LSB: Start Jenkins at boot time
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/jenkins; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2017-08-01 05:39:06 UTC; 7ms ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 3700 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/jenkins start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Aug 01 05:39:06 ip-0 systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Start Jenkins ....
Aug 01 05:39:06 ip-0 jenkins[3700]: ERROR: No Java executable ...
Aug 01 05:39:06 ip-0 jenkins[3700]: If you actually have java ...
Aug 01 05:39:06 ip-0 systemd[1]: jenkins.service: Control pro...1
Aug 01 05:39:06 ip-0 systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: Start J....
Aug 01 05:39:06 ip-0 systemd[1]: jenkins.service: Unit entere....
Aug 01 05:39:06 ip-0 systemd[1]: jenkins.service: Failed with....
To fix the issue manually install Java Runtime Environment:
JDK version 9:
sudo apt install openjdk-9-jre
JDK version 8:
sudo apt install openjdk-8-jre
Open Jenkins configuration file:
sudo vi /etc/init.d/jenkins
Finally, append path to the new java executable (line 16):
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/bin/