Bug#889044: udev: system upgrade is broken

[Boris Pek]

Package: udev
Version: 237-1
Severity: normal


Dear Maintainer,

I have upgraded a remote system (connected via ssh) as usual, but this
time the upgrading process was broken with strange results:

dina at Dina:~$ export LC_ALL=C
dina at Dina:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -V
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
Setting up udev (237-1) ...
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
invoke-rc.d: could not determine current runlevel
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
invoke-rc.d: initscript udev, action "restart" failed.
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing package udev (--configure):
 installed udev package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Setting up exim4-daemon-light (4.90-5) ...
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
invoke-rc.d: could not determine current runlevel
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
invoke-rc.d: initscript exim4, action "start" failed.
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing package exim4-daemon-light (--configure):
 installed exim4-daemon-light package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 udev
 exim4-daemon-light
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


And now I cannot even reboot a system remotely...


dina at Dina:~$ sudo shutdown -r now
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
Failed to open /dev/initctl: No such device or address
Failed to talk to init daemon.


dina at Dina:~$ ls -alp /dev/initctl
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Jan 27 09:44 /dev/initctl -> /run/systemd/initctl/fifo
dina at Dina:~$ ls -alp /dev/initctl /run/systemd/initctl/fifo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Jan 27 09:44 /dev/initctl -> /run/systemd/initctl/fifo
prw------- 1 root root  0 Feb  1 14:46 /run/systemd/initctl/fifo


dina at Dina:~$ sudo dmesg | grep -i systemd
[    3.958989] systemd[1]: RTC configured in localtime, applying delta of 180 minutes to system time.
[    3.985200] systemd[1]: systemd 236 running in system mode. (+PAM +AUDIT +SELINUX +IMA +APPARMOR +SMACK +SYSVINIT +UTMP +LIBCRYPTSETUP +GCRYPT +GNUTLS +ACL +XZ +LZ4 +SECCOMP +BLKID +ELFUTILS +KMOD -IDN2 +IDN default-hierarchy=hybrid)
[    4.004135] systemd[1]: Detected architecture x86-64.
[    4.004258] systemd[1]: Set hostname to <Dina>.
[    4.027669] systemd[1]: File /lib/systemd/system/systemd-journald.service:35 configures an IP firewall (IPAddressDeny=any), but the local system does not support BPF/cgroup based firewalling.
[    4.027671] systemd[1]: Proceeding WITHOUT firewalling in effect! (This warning is only shown for the first loaded unit using IP firewalling.)
[    4.059766] systemd[1]: System is tainted: local-hwclock:var-run-bad
[    4.060039] systemd[1]: Created slice User and Session Slice.
[    4.060133] systemd[1]: Created slice System Slice.
[    4.060212] systemd[1]: Created slice system-systemd\x2dfsck.slice.
[    4.060242] systemd[1]: Listening on Syslog Socket.
[    4.107197] systemd-journald[251]: Received request to flush runtime journal from PID 1
[427045.160058] systemd: 43 output lines suppressed due to ratelimiting
[427045.167709] systemd[1]: systemd 237 running in system mode. (+PAM +AUDIT +SELINUX +IMA +APPARMOR +SMACK +SYSVINIT +UTMP +LIBCRYPTSETUP +GCRYPT +GNUTLS +ACL +XZ +LZ4 +SECCOMP +BLKID +ELFUTILS +KMOD -IDN2 +IDN -PCRE2 default-hierarchy=hybrid)
[427045.168054] systemd[1]: Detected architecture x86-64.
[427045.210868] systemd[1]: File /lib/systemd/system/systemd-logind.service:37 configures an IP firewall (IPAddressDeny=any), but the local system does not support BPF/cgroup based firewalling.
[427045.210870] systemd[1]: Proceeding WITHOUT firewalling in effect! (This warning is only shown for the first loaded unit using IP firewalling.)
[427045.228374] systemd[1]: Failed to connect to system bus: No such file or directory
[427045.228377] systemd[1]: Failed to initialize D-Bus connection: No such file or directory


dina at Dina:~$ dpkg -l '*systemd*'
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                        Version            Architecture       Description
+++-===========================-==================-==================-===========================================================
un  dh-systemd                  <none>             <none>             (no description available)
ii  kde-config-systemd          1.2.1-3            amd64              KDE control center module for Systemd
ii  libnss-systemd:amd64        237-1              amd64              nss module providing dynamic user and group name resolution
ii  libpam-systemd:amd64        237-1              amd64              system and service manager - PAM module
ii  libsystemd0:amd64           237-1              amd64              systemd utility library
ii  libsystemd0:i386            237-1              i386               systemd utility library
ii  systemd                     237-1              amd64              system and service manager
un  systemd-container           <none>             <none>             (no description available)
in  systemd-shim                <none>             amd64              (no description available)
ii  systemd-sysv                237-1              amd64              system and service manager - SysV links


dina at Dina:~$ df -h / /home
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p2  110G   23G   82G  22% /
/dev/sda1       938G  170G  721G  20% /home


dina at Dina:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux unstable (sid)
Release:        unstable
Codename:       sid
dina at Dina:~$ uname -a
Linux Dina 4.14.0-3-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.14.13-1 (2018-01-14) x86_64 GNU/Linux
dina at Dina:~$ uptime
 14:50:42 up 5 days,  2:02,  0 users,  load average: 0.27, 0.41, 0.34

Nor Sleep, nor Hibernate mode was not used.


Where is the bug came from?
Any hints how to solve a problem?

Best regards,
Boris