Bug#856988: systemd: Timeout for sys-subsystem-net-devices-multi-user.device with missing /etc/machine-id

[Ivan Baldo]

Package: systemd
Version: 232-18
Severity: normal

Situation: PXE boot with RO NFS and using OverlayFS for RW /.
So, I rm'ed /etc/machine-id and /var/lib/dbus/machine-id, thinking that it would be generated at
boot and they do, but sys-subsystem-net-devices-multi-user.device timeouts after 1m30s then.
The solution is to have an empty /etc/machine-id, but I wonder if SystemD could be improved to
handle the situation better for another poor soul that tries to do the same as me.
Searching I found this https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/11970 and from there
https://labs.riseup.net/code/projects/tails/repository/revisions/0d5d4d42919818a63bfd604c62737ce337ac9d01/diff
Thanks!!!

-- Package-specific info:

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=es_UY.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=es_UY.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+b1
ii  libapparmor1    2.11.0-2
ii  libaudit1       1:2.6.7-1
ii  libblkid1       2.29.1-1
ii  libc6           2.24-9
ii  libcap2         1:2.25-1
ii  libcryptsetup4  2:1.7.3-3
ii  libgcc1         1:6.3.0-6
ii  libgcrypt20     1.7.6-1
ii  libgpg-error0   1.26-2
ii  libidn11        1.33-1
ii  libip4tc0       1.6.0+snapshot20161117-5
ii  libkmod2        23-2
ii  liblz4-1        0.0~r131-2+b1
ii  liblzma5        5.2.2-1.2+b1
ii  libmount1       2.29.1-1
ii  libpam0g        1.1.8-3.5
ii  libseccomp2     2.3.1-2.1
ii  libselinux1     2.6-3
ii  libsystemd0     232-18
ii  mount           2.29.1-1
ii  util-linux      2.29.1-1

Versions of packages systemd recommends:
ii  dbus            1.10.16-1
ii  libpam-systemd  232-18

Versions of packages systemd suggests:
ii  policykit-1        0.105-17
pn  systemd-container  <none>
ii  systemd-ui         3-4

Versions of packages systemd is related to:
pn  dracut           <none>
ii  initramfs-tools  0.127
ii  udev             232-18

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/systemd/system.conf changed [not included]
/etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf changed [not included]

-- no debconf information