Bug#793116: systemd: journald randomly exits with USR1, leaving /dev/log unusable

[Phillip Berndt]

Package: systemd
Version: 215-17+deb8u1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

systemd-journald randomly exits sometimes, about once every 2-3 weeks. I cannot
say what leads to the situation, and I'm not sufficiently familiar with systemd
to do the neccesary digging on my own. I forgot to make a
systemd-analyze dump before restarting the service, so I won't be able
to attach it here until this happens again. Let me
know what else I can do to help solve this. The highly critical
side-effect from this bug is that
/dev/log becomes unusable,

# logger -u /dev/log FOO
logger: socket /dev/log: Connection refused

which, among others, makes postfix-policyd-spf-perl crash upon
startup, which results
in Postfix (temporarily) rejecting _all_ incoming mails.

systemctl reports

<<<snip<<<

# systemctl status systemd-journald
systemd-journald.service - Journal Service
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-journald.service; static)
   Active: failed (Result: start-limit) since Mo 2015-07-13 01:21:13
CEST; 14h ago
     Docs: man:systemd-journald.service(8)
           man:journald.conf(5)
  Process: 24406 ExecStart=/lib/systemd/systemd-journald (code=killed,
signal=USR1)
 Main PID: 24406 (code=killed, signal=USR1)

# systemctl status systemd-journald-dev-log.socket
systemd-journald-dev-log.socket - Journal Socket (/dev/log)
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-journald-dev-log.socket; static)
   Active: failed (Result: service-failed-permanent) since Mo
2015-07-13 01:21:13 CEST; 14h ago
     Docs: man:systemd-journald.service(8)
           man:journald.conf(5)
   Listen: /run/systemd/journal/dev-log (Datagram)

Warning: Journal has been rotated since unit was started. Log output
is incomplete or unavailable.

<>>>snap>>>

- Phillip Berndt


-- Package-specific info:

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.1
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.41-042stab106.6 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages systemd depends on:
ii  acl             2.2.52-2
ii  adduser         3.113+nmu3
ii  initscripts     2.88dsf-59
ii  libacl1         2.2.52-2
ii  libaudit1       1:2.4-1+b1
ii  libblkid1       2.25.2-6
ii  libc6           2.19-18
ii  libcap2         1:2.24-8
ii  libcap2-bin     1:2.24-8
ii  libcryptsetup4  2:1.6.6-5
ii  libgcrypt20     1.6.3-2
ii  libkmod2        18-3
ii  liblzma5        5.1.1alpha+20120614-2+b3
ii  libpam0g        1.1.8-3.1
ii  libselinux1     2.3-2
ii  libsystemd0     215-17+deb8u1
ii  mount           2.25.2-6
ii  sysv-rc         2.88dsf-59
ii  udev            215-17+deb8u1
ii  util-linux      2.25.2-6

Versions of packages systemd recommends:
ii  dbus            1.8.18-0+deb8u1
ii  libpam-systemd  215-17+deb8u1

Versions of packages systemd suggests:
pn  systemd-ui  <none>

-- no debconf information