Bug#918190: systemd: timesyncd stopped updating clock file after package update

[Patrick Häcker]

Package: systemd
Version: 240-2
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

after updating systemd from 239-15 to 240-2 timesyncd stopped touching
/var/lib/private/systemd/timesync/clock any more and its time stamps
stay at the time of the package upgrade.
Additionally the file is no longer used to update the system time after
reboot, using the compile time instead until an NTP server is available
(if no RTC is available).

This is reproducable for the two systems I tested (the other is on amd64).
On both systems the last timestamp is the time of the package upgrade
according to the dpkg log.
Downgrading to 239-15 solves the issue and the file is updated again.

Using
> systemd.log_level=debug systemd.log_target=kmsg log_buf_len=1M printk.devkmsg=on
as linux command line boot parameter, the following error appears in the log:
> systemd-timesyncd[309]: Failed to create state directory, ignoring: Permission denied

So the open of /var/lib/systemd/timesync in timesyncd.c, line 37, fails. The
reason is probably
> ls -ld /var/lib/private
> drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Dez 20 16:03 /var/lib/private/
as timesyncd runs with UID/GUI systemd-timesync:systemd-timesync.

The following article might be related (modulo all the noise):
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/SystemdTimesyncdFailure

Kind regards
Patrick


-- Package-specific info:

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (800, 'testing'), (700, 'stable'), (500, 'stable-updates')
Architecture: armhf (armv7l)

Kernel: Linux 4.19.8-v7+ (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=de_DE.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          3.118
ii  libacl1          2.2.52-3+b1
ii  libapparmor1     2.13.1-3+b1
ii  libaudit1        1:2.8.4-2
ii  libblkid1        2.33-0.2
ii  libc6            2.28-2
ii  libcap2          1:2.25-1.2
ii  libcryptsetup12  2:2.0.6-1
ii  libgcrypt20      1.8.4-4
ii  libgnutls30      3.6.5-2
ii  libgpg-error0    1.33-3
ii  libidn11         1.33-2.2
ii  libip4tc0        1.8.2-3
ii  libkmod2         25-2
ii  liblz4-1         1.8.2-1
ii  liblzma5         5.2.2-1.3
ii  libmount1        2.33-0.2
ii  libpam0g         1.1.8-3.8
ii  libseccomp2      2.3.3-3
ii  libselinux1      2.8-1+b1
ii  libsystemd0      240-2
ii  mount            2.33-0.2
ii  util-linux       2.33-0.2

Versions of packages systemd recommends:
ii  dbus            1.12.12-1
ii  libpam-systemd  240-2

Versions of packages systemd suggests:
ii  policykit-1        0.105-23
pn  systemd-container  <none>

Versions of packages systemd is related to:
pn  dracut           <none>
ii  initramfs-tools  0.132
ii  udev             240-2

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/systemd/system.conf changed:
[Manager]
DefaultTimeoutStartSec=10s
DefaultTimeoutStopSec=10s


-- no debconf information