Bug#920018: Memory Leak in journald? Failed to write entry (23 items, 500 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory

[Sven Hartge]

Package: systemd
Version: 240-4
Severity: important

Hi!

Since systemd_240-4 journald seems to either leak memory or something
strange is going on with my system.

Soon after boot or journald restart, I get messages like this in my
kernel log:

[...]
[31317.206261] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (29 items, 682 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31330.715806] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (21 items, 547 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31330.756475] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (21 items, 549 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31330.756946] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (21 items, 633 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31330.757454] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (21 items, 629 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31331.070486] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (22 items, 577 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31331.070625] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (22 items, 564 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31331.103742] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (22 items, 581 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31331.103878] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (22 items, 548 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31331.104589] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (22 items, 562 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31334.787786] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (24 items, 611 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[31335.992491] systemd-journald[341]: Failed to write entry (23 items, 500 bytes), ignoring: Cannot allocate memory
[...]

Also the committed memory size as recored by munin (see attached image)
spikes quickly. You can clearly spot in the graph, when I upgraded to
systemd_240-4. You can also see the times where I manually restarted
journald.

(Yes, this system is a bit small for all the services running on it,
hence the swap usage.)

I now have downgraded to systemd_240-3 which resolves this issue for me.

Other systems of mine show the same, but because they have more RAM, the
problem is not as visible (yet).

Grüße,
Sven.

-- Package-specific info:

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers unstable-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'testing-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (200, 'experimental'), (1, 'experimental-debug')
Architecture: i386 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: amd64

Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.utf8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=de_DE.utf8 (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     2.13.2-3
ii  libaudit1        1:2.8.4-2
ii  libblkid1        2.33.1-0.1
ii  libc6            2.28-5
ii  libcap2          1:2.25-1.2
ii  libcryptsetup12  2:2.0.6-1
ii  libgcrypt20      1.8.4-5
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         1.8.3-1
ii  liblzma5         5.2.2-1.3
ii  libmount1        2.33.1-0.1
ii  libpam0g         1.1.8-4
ii  libseccomp2      2.3.3-3
ii  libselinux1      2.8-1+b1
ii  libsystemd0      240-4
ii  mount            2.33.1-0.1
ii  util-linux       2.33.1-0.1

Versions of packages systemd recommends:
ii  dbus            1.12.12-1
ii  libpam-systemd  240-4

Versions of packages systemd suggests:
ii  policykit-1        0.105-25
pn  systemd-container  <none>

Versions of packages systemd is related to:
pn  dracut           <none>
ii  initramfs-tools  0.132
ii  udev             240-4

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/systemd/journald.conf changed:
[Journal]
Storage=persistent
ForwardToConsole=yes
TTYPath=/dev/tty12

/etc/systemd/logind.conf changed:
[Login]
KillUserProcesses=no

/etc/systemd/system.conf changed:
[Manager]
RuntimeWatchdogSec=60


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