[Pkg-systemd-maintainers] Bug#718038: systemd fails shut

[Joey Hess]

Package: systemd
Version: 44-12
Severity: normal

Trying out systemd once more, I had an experience which is well
described by #669101:

   Attempting to boot systemd on this system by adding init=/bin/systemd to
   the end of the kernel command line results in:

    - The output of the fsck processes for the disks being displayed
    - The screen changes to a higher resolution console mode

   but no further output or disk activity.  The system still appears to be
   running and ctrl-alt-delete triggers a clean reboot so it's presumably
   blocked on something.

But for entirely different reasons; I have no encrypted filesystems to
fail; in my case a locally written /etc/network/if-up.d/local was trying
to start aiccu when lo came up, which basically deadlocked things.
(I did not bother waiting 5 minutes to see if systemd would time it out.)

The specific problem doesn't matter; systemd's behavior when it encounters
a wide class of problems is the issue.

1. With the default "quiet" boot parameter, systemd outputs very little
   useful information.
   But, d-i started adding "quiet" to grub command lines only to suppress
   verbose and generally not useful kernel messages; the intent was not
   to make the init system so quiet that the user can't tell what's going on!
2. Why does networking need to come up before gettys are started? My
   laptop has no network filesystems. The only failure mode that should
   prevent a getty from being started should be a fsck failure or root
   filesystem mount failure, which should lead to a recovery shell.
   Systemd has failure modes where no shell is started.

The combination of these behaviors yields a system that fails shut;
it can't easily be debugged without an arbitrary amount of complication.


(Now happily running systemd for the first time. README.Debian
seems out of date re su exit code being busted by PAM, and lightdm works
which it didn't used to.)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.9-1-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages systemd depends on:
ii  initscripts          2.88dsf-43
ii  libacl1              2.2.52-1
ii  libaudit0            1:1.7.18-1.1
ii  libc6                2.17-7
ii  libcap2              1:2.22-1.2
ii  libcryptsetup4       2:1.6.1-1
ii  libdbus-1-3          1.6.12-1
ii  libkmod2             9-3
ii  liblzma5             5.1.1alpha+20120614-2
ii  libpam0g             1.1.3-9
ii  libselinux1          2.1.13-2
ii  libsystemd-daemon0   44-12
ii  libsystemd-id128-0   44-12
ii  libsystemd-journal0  44-12
ii  libsystemd-login0    44-12
ii  libudev0             175-7.2
ii  libwrap0             7.6.q-24
ii  udev                 175-7.2
ii  util-linux           2.20.1-5.5

Versions of packages systemd recommends:
ii  libpam-systemd  44-12

Versions of packages systemd suggests:
ii  python        2.7.5-2
ii  python-cairo  1.8.8-1+b2
ii  python-dbus   1.2.0-2
pn  systemd-ui    <none>

-- no debconf information

-- 
see shy jo
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