Bug#794264: systemd: System will no longer boot

[ael]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 11:15:06PM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
> Control: tags -1 moreinfo
> 
> Am 31.07.2015 um 20:57 schrieb ael:
> > Package: systemd
> > Version: 221-1
> > Severity: critical
> > Justification: breaks the whole system
> > 
> > I had to select the sysvinit option from the grub menu in order to
> > achieve a boot. The standard menu entry got as far as (probably) trying
> > to spawn X, and then hung. But it had no business doing that because
> > the default target was set to
> > default.target -> /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target
> > in /etc/systemd/systemd/
> 
> If X hangs, what makes you sure systemd is at fault?

X runs when booted via sysvinit. I have subsequently discovered that I
cannot shutdown that machine. It reports something like the
shutdown.service did not complete (with timeout). I think I know why
that happened, *but* to refuse to umount the filesystem and stop all
processes to allow a safe manual power off is a major flaw. I had to
just cut power after manually unmounting the few mounts that it would
permit.

That whole machine is now is a complete mess, and I am not sure that I
will be able to recover to try to provide the reports you request
without a lot of time and effort. I will be away from the machine for
about 1 month in a day or so, so such a report may be delayed.

Another (amd64) machine has also stopped booting properly after the
latest updates. At least it gets as far as emergency mode. That too seems
to be a systemd problem.

Back to the i386 machine, the target in this report:  when I tried to
apt-get upgrade in case the bug had been fixed, it hung on systemd
because udev could not be upgraded. The udev refusal to upgrade came
with a message from dpkg about a group 'Input' already existing.
This from memory: so the details may not be correct. As I say that
system is messed up so I can't easily check those details for now.

Thanks for the reply.


> Please provide a verbose debug log of systemd.
> Add "systemd.log_level=debug systemd.debug-shell" to the kernel command
> line. You should get a debug shell on tty9, which you can use to inspect
> the system.
> Please attach the output of
> journalctl -alb
> systemd-analyze dump
> systemctl status
> 
> 
> 
> [1] http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Debugging/#index1h1
> -- 
> Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
> universe are pointed away from Earth?
>