[Pkg-libvirt-maintainers] Bug#895966: libvirt-daemon: Should suggest/recommend/depend systemd-container (redo #822581)

Wed Apr 18 02:21:19 BST 2018

Package: libvirt-daemon
Version: 3.0.0-4+deb9u3
Severity: normal

This is a followup to #822581, which has been archived and thus I can't seem
to reopen it, and direct mail to the maintainer also bounced (bad ipv6
config somewhere in the path it seems).

After a long time of not being able to make sense of why I was having
problems, and the maintainer not, I think I was able to track down the issue
via some thinking and some UTSL.  I think another detail of the issue is
that the problem may only manifest on package upgrades, and that removing
but not *purging* systemd-container might mask the issue as well.

The mail I tried to send as a followup to #822581 follows:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2017, Guido Günther wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 08:21:22PM +0200, Guido Günther wrote:
>> I just tried to reproduce with 2.1.0-rc1 and I can't reproduce this. Are
>> you still seeing this with recent versions? If so please provide logs
>> (the containers log and libvirtds log would be a start).
>
> Closing since things work here and there was no submitter feedback for
> over a year.

I'm not having exactly the same problem as before, but I am still seeing 
that systemd-container is needed for proper operation of libvirt for lxc 
guests.  Without it I'm having problems with it tracking running guests 
across restarts.  I'm finding that there end up with two copies of the 
guest running, but only one of them does libvirt know about.  This 
causes all kinds of hyper-bizarro confusion within the guest -- there's 
two copies of systemd, of rsyslog, cron, etc., all working from the same 
system image.  But the one systemd doesn't know about has lost its 
network connectivity, so I generally can't do much other than just kill 
it.

I think a bit of UTSL has allowed me to track down the root of this 
problem and its connection to the systemd-container package.

When the lxc driver starts up, it tries to reconnect to the running 
guests -- check the Reconnect methods in lxc_process.c, called initially 
from the lxcStateInitialize method in lxc_driver.c

The Reconnect methods /seem/ to be at least partly dependent upon 
virSystemdGetMachineNameByPID (also in lxc_process.c), at least when 
running under systemd (which of course is the norm in Debian).

That method is in turn dependent on the org.freedesktop.machine1 DBus 
service.

And that service is only available if systemd-container is installed.

Extra fun: the dbus service file is a conf file, so a normal apt remove 
systemd-container won't remove it, which seems like it could confuse 
testing this issue.

-- 
 	-Matt
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
                 -- Philip K. Dick
GPG fingerprint: 0061 15DF D282 D4A9 57CE  77C5 16AF 1460 4A3C C4E9

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.4
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'oldstable'), (490, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-6-amd64 (SMP w/12 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages libvirt-daemon depends on:
ii  libapparmor1        2.11.0-3+deb9u2
ii  libaudit1           1:2.6.7-2
ii  libavahi-client3    0.6.32-2
ii  libavahi-common3    0.6.32-2
ii  libblkid1           2.29.2-1+deb9u1
ii  libc6               2.27-3
ii  libcap-ng0          0.7.7-3+b1
ii  libdbus-1-3         1.10.26-0+deb9u1
ii  libdevmapper1.02.1  2:1.02.137-2
ii  libfuse2            2.9.7-1
ii  libgnutls30         3.5.8-5+deb9u3
ii  libnetcf1           1:0.2.8-1+b2
ii  libnl-3-200         3.2.27-2
ii  libnl-route-3-200   3.2.27-2
ii  libnuma1            2.0.11-2.1
ii  libparted2          3.2-17
ii  libpcap0.8          1.8.1-3
ii  libpciaccess0       0.13.4-1+b2
ii  librados2           10.2.5-7.2
ii  librbd1             10.2.5-7.2
ii  libsasl2-2          2.1.27~101-g0780600+dfsg-3
ii  libselinux1         2.6-3+b3
ii  libssh2-1           1.7.0-1
ii  libudev1            232-25+deb9u2
ii  libvirt0            3.0.0-4+deb9u3
ii  libxen-4.8          4.8.3+comet2+shim4.10.0+comet3-1+deb9u5
ii  libxenstore3.0      4.8.3+comet2+shim4.10.0+comet3-1+deb9u5
ii  libxml2             2.9.4+dfsg1-2.2+deb9u2
ii  libyajl2            2.1.0-2+b3

Versions of packages libvirt-daemon recommends:
ii  libxml2-utils   2.9.4+dfsg1-2.2+deb9u2
ii  netcat-openbsd  1.130-3
ii  qemu            1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3
ii  qemu-kvm        1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3

Versions of packages libvirt-daemon suggests:
ii  libvirt-daemon-system  3.0.0-4+deb9u3
pn  numad                  <none>

-- no debconf information