[systemd-devel] Cannot start service due to 'systemd-tty-ask-password-agent --watch' not answering

[Lennart Poettering]

On Tue, 08.09.15 05:51, Yeela Kaplan (ykaplan at redhat.com) wrote:

> > This is really a misconception about what
> > systemd-tty-ask-password-agent actually does. It's job is to bring
> > password queries from system components to the screen while you wait
> > for systemctl to finish. This is useful for things like LUKS hdd
> > encryption where the system might have to query the user for a
> > passphrase to proceed starting units. Other cases where this is used
> > is for passphrases of SSL certificates.
> > 
> > Unless you actually use LUKS or SSL certificates with a passphrase
> > (with a web server that supports querying passwords via systemd's
> > password querying mechanism), the agent does pretty much nothing.
> > 
> > The agent is forked off, waits for passwords to be queried, queries
> > them when there are any, and then exits when systemctl finishes.
> > 
> > You can pass --no-ask-password to systemctl to turn off the agent. See
> > the man page for details.
> > 
> 
> Thank you for your response.
> I have tried running:  strace -f systemctl --no-ask-password start supervdsmd.service
> and it still reproduces. 
> but now intead of:
> bash(3448)─┬─pstree(3625)
>            └─strace(3618)───systemctl(3623)───systemd-tty-ask(3624)
> 
> I get:
> bash(3448)─┬─pstree(3586)
>            └─strace(3564)───systemctl(3569)
> 
> Do you know what systemctl is waiting for then?

Most likely that supervdsmd.service finishes start-up. Maybe there's a
bug in the unit file regarding notification when it finished start-up?

(You can also tell systemctl to just enqueue a start job, but not wait
for it to complete. Use --no-block for that).

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat