Bug#852202: systemd 232-13 aborts during upgrade and subsequent boots

[David Taylor]

Package: systemd
Version: 232-13
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks the whole system

Currently running systemd_231-9, first experienced this problem when
trying to upgrade to 232-8, 232-13 is still giving the same problem.

During upgrade or boot systemd aborts due to an assertion failure:

Broadcast message from systemd-journald@<host> (Sun 2017-01-22 12:59:45 GMT):
systemd[1]: Caught <ABRT>, dumped core as pid 1535.
Message from syslogd@<host> Jan 22 12:59:45 ...
 systemd[1]: Caught <ABRT>, dumped core as pid 1535.

Broadcast message from systemd-journald@<host> (Sun 2017-01-22 12:59:45 GMT):
systemd[1]: Freezing execution.
Message from syslogd at deb550s at Jan 22 12:59:45 ...
 systemd[1]: Freezing execution.

syslog shows:

systemd[1]: Assertion 'u' failed at ../src/core/unit.c:521, function unit_free(). Aborting.  

A similar problem appears to have been fixed upstream:
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4747

-- Package-specific info:

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.8.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.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  adduser         3.115
ii  libacl1         2.2.52-3
ii  libapparmor1    2.11.0-1
ii  libaudit1       1:2.6.7-1
ii  libblkid1       2.29-1
ii  libc6           2.24-8
ii  libcap2         1:2.25-1
ii  libcryptsetup4  2:1.7.3-3
ii  libgcrypt20     1.7.5-2
ii  libgpg-error0   1.26-1
ii  libidn11        1.33-1
ii  libip4tc0       1.6.0+snapshot20161117-4
ii  libkmod2        23-2
ii  liblz4-1        0.0~r131-2
ii  liblzma5        5.2.2-1.2
ii  libmount1       2.29-1
ii  libpam0g        1.1.8-3.5
ii  libseccomp2     2.3.1-2.1
ii  libselinux1     2.6-3
ii  libsystemd0     232-13
ii  mount           2.29-1
ii  util-linux      2.29-1

Versions of packages systemd recommends:
ii  dbus            1.10.14-1
ii  libpam-systemd  232-13

Versions of packages systemd suggests:
ii  policykit-1        0.105-17
pn  systemd-container  <none>
pn  systemd-ui         <none>

Versions of packages systemd is related to:
pn  dracut           <none>
ii  initramfs-tools  0.126
ih  udev             232-13

-- no debconf information