Bug#923921: systemd: Updating systemd breaks Dovecot (and possibly other services)

[Michael Biebl]

Am 18.03.19 um 22:00 schrieb Nico Haase:
> Dear Mika, dear Michael,
> 
> thank you for your answers and apologies for answering them so late.
> 
> Am 07.03.2019 um 09:15 schrieb Michael Prokop:
>> * Nico Haase [Thu Mar 07, 2019 at 08:33:57AM +0100]:
>>> Package: systemd
>>> Version: 241-1~bpo9+1
>>> Severity: normal
>>
>>> Dear Maintainer,
>>
>>> this morning, apticron reminded me (once more) to upgrade some
>>> packages from stretch-backports. These included dovecot-core and
>>> systemd (and others). After having installed all of them, Dovecot
>>> refused to start.
>>
>>> The following lines were reported in daemon.log:
>>
>>> Mar  7 07:35:25 host systemd[1]: Started Dovecot IMAP/POP3 email server.
>>> Mar  7 07:35:25 host systemd[30913]: dovecot.service: Failed to set
>>> up mount namespacing: Permission denied
>>> Mar  7 07:35:25 host systemd[30913]: dovecot.service: Failed at step
>>> NAMESPACE spawning /usr/sbin/dovecot: Permission denied
>>> Mar  7 07:35:25 host systemd[1]: dovecot.service: Main process
>>> exited, code=exited, status=226/NAMESPACE
>>> Mar  7 07:35:25 host systemd[1]: dovecot.service: Failed with result
>>> 'exit-code'.
>>
>>> I have no clue how to solve this, as there a no canonical sources for
>>> that messages. The only obvious thing was to downgrade systemd to
>>> 232-25+deb9u9 again, which let me start Dovecot again.
>>
>>> If there is anything I can do to help you spot the error, please ask.
>>> I'm not that experienced with systemd, but I'd be able to run
>>> upgrades or other commands that could provide more information.
>>
>> So you're using a (quite old) Proxmox kernel:
>>
>>> Kernel: Linux 4.4.134-1-pve (SMP w/12 CPU cores)
>>
>> Any reason why you don't use a more recent version like 4.15.18-11-pve?
> 
> Yep, you've found the one thing I cannot change: my system is running
> virtualized, and my provider is currently not able to upgrade the kernel.
> 
> Even if I know that such checks can get pretty expansive, would it be
> possible to introduce a clear warning if such incompatibilities arise?
> If you know exactly that there might be a feature missing from a more
> current kernel, could you give a clear hint or even reject upgrading the
> package?

While I can sympathize with your situation, we simply do not have the
man power to support every possible kernel configuration / kernel
version. And since we don't know, what exactly is missing from your
kernel, we can't really write a check for that either.

I honestly don't know what to do with this bug report besides
recommending to stick with an older version of systemd until you can
upgrade the kernel as well.

The alternative is that you start digging yourself to find out why v241
fails for you.
For that I would follow the instructions at
https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Debugging/ and boot with

systemd.log_level=debug systemd.log_target=kmsg log_buf_len=1M
printk.devkmsg=on

and then investigate the journal, if you find any pointers.

-- 
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?

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