Bug#1041014: marked as done (systemd-timesyncd.service: Failed to execute /lib/systemd/systemd-timesyncd: Permission dienied)

[AlMa]

reopen 1041014
thanks

Michael, thanks for a quick reaction.
It's not he who messed up but probably the upgrade process from Debian 
11 to Debian 12.  The system is not booting up properly (gdm3 fails to 
start and other issues), and the message concerning systemd-timesyncd is 
the earliest one in the log that might indicate a related problem.  As 
for bugreport, it's a bit troublesome to install it, run it, copy the 
output to a working machine, anonymize the output, and post it.  I'll 
try to do it, but as this would take long, it won't happen today.  Here 
are the permissions (manually retyped after booting into single mode and 
reading the screen output):

# ls -la /
insgesamt 72
drwxr-xr-x  18 root root  4096 14. Jul 13:56 .
drwxr-xr-x  18 root root  4096 14. Jul 13:56 ..
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root     7 13. Jul 16:41 bin -> /usr/bin
…

# ls -la /tmp
insgesamt 4
drwxrwxrwt  8 root root  160 14. Jul 14:17 .
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4096 14. Jul 13:56 ..
drwxrwxrwt  2 root root   40 14. Jul 13:46 .font-unix
…

# ls -la /var/tmp
insgesamt 28
drwxrwxrwt  5 root     root     12288 14. Jul 14:17 .
drwxr-xr-x 12 root     root      4096  3. Dez 2021  ..
drwx------  2 username username  4096  5. Mär 16:57 audacity-username
…

libselinux1 version 3.4-1+b6 is installed.  I've re-installed it now. 
Attempt to remove?

After restarting NetworkManager and getting network, running `systemctl 
restart systemd-timesyncd` ended up with "systemd-timesyncd.service: 
Start request repeated too quickly." followed by 
"systemd-timesyncd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'." in the 
output of `journalctl -xeu systemd-timesyncd.service`.

If you are think that the original problem is not related to systemd, 
please feel free to reassign to another package if you are sure. (Which 
one? I don't know. Probably, a boot-related or an installation-related one.)

As for the bug(s) in systemd itself, what it should do in any case is 
improve the error messages. The aforementioned messages such as "The 
error number returned by this process is ERRNO." and 
"systemd-timesyncd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'." are bogus 
and not really helpful.  Not the generic strings "ERRNO" and 
"'exit-code'" should be output but specific symbolic error names (e.g., 
EPERM, ENOENT, EIO, …) or numerical values.  If such specific symbolic 
error names and numerical values are unavailable, the aforementioned 
messages should be simplified (e.g., "An error was returned by this 
process." and "systemd-timesyncd.service: Failed and exited." if this is 
really what happened there.)

Gratefully,
AlMa

On 14.07.23 08:12, Michael Biebl wrote:
> Fwiw, last time someone posted a similar message, he had messed up 
> permissions of the / file system.
> 
> Also check /tmp and /var/tmp directory permission and make sure nothing 
> like selinux is interfering.