[systemd-devel] One of my fundamental problems with systemd...

[Michael H. Warfield]

My most fundamental problem with systemd is its insistence in hiding and
obfuscating errors in ways that makes debugging almost impossible.
Almost every upgrade problem I've had in Fedora has been related to
systemd's failure to provide comprehendable error messages to things
like errors in fstab (#1 fsck up).

The most recent problem has been an issue trying to get LXC containers
to work.  The networking is not coming up in the container at boot.
It's not starting.  What do I get?  I finally dug it out of the console
barf.  A message that says this:

 [FAILED] Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking.
         See 'systemctl status network.service' for details.

Ok fine...  So I get logged in and I run this...

[root at alcove mhw]# systemctl status network.service
network.service - LSB: Bring up/down networking
	  Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/network)
	  Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed, 24 Oct 2012 18:23:07 +0400; 1min 57s ago
	 Process: 91 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/network start (code=exited, status=209/STDOUT)
	  CGroup: name=systemd:/system/lxc/Alcove/system/network.service

Tells me nothing.  Does not tell me where the problem is...

If I then try to manually start the network I get this...

[root at alcove mhw]# service network start
Starting network (via systemctl):  network[275]: Bringing up loopback interface:  ./network-functions: line 237: cd: /var/run/netreport: No such file or directory
network[275]: [  OK  ]
network[275]: Bringing up interface eth0:  ./network-functions: line 237: cd: /var/run/netreport: No such file or directory
network[275]: [  OK  ]
network[275]: touch: cannot touch `/var/lock/subsys/network': No such file or directory
                                                           [  OK  ]
OK...  This I can understand.  There are missing directories in /var/run
and in /var/lock.  Don't tell me how that script should have done this
or that or the other.  That's NOT the problem.  The problem is that
systemd did not communicate back WHAT THE REAL PROBLEM WAS.  Why is it
so difficult for systemd to respond with intelligent error message???
The message said to run "systemctl status network.service" but that
result was worthless.

I'll now edit that startup script to fix this nonsense but it's pointing
to a fundamental failure in systemd in communicating errors back to
administrators in an actionable manner. 

Mike
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
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