Problem stopping/restarting dashd,,,

[semajjames]

I have used dashman to install dash/sentinal on a new server ,,
dashman says dashd is now running on a blank/empty dash.conf file and I have no restart script running..
Now I want to test my restart script and load a live dash.conf file but it seems that I cannot stop dashd using
./dash-cli stop
and i cannot restart dashd using dashman
./dashman restart

when I use ./dash-cli stop from the .dashcore folder I get

:~$ cd .dashcore
:~/.dashcore$ ./dash-cli stop
error: Could not locate RPC credentials. No authentication cookie could be found, and no rpcpassword is set in the configuration file (/home/********/.dashcore/dash.conf)

and when I try to restart using dashman I get

:~/dashman$ ./dashman restart
dashman version 0.1.22 (9-ga5b312e) - Wed Feb 22 11:51:35 EST 2017

restart dashd? [y/N] y
--> Deleting cache files, debug.log... DONE!
--> Starting dashd...Error: Cannot obtain a lock on data directory /home/*********/.dashcore. Dash Core is probably already running.
DONE!
--> Waiting for dashd to respond....................................................................
................................................................................ the dots just keep coming and i have to close the window