[systemd-devel] How to troubleshoot 'step CHDIR spawning' failure.

[Tomasz Torcz]

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 07:28:34AM -0400, MikeB wrote:
> I'm running systemd 215 on a fairly up-to-date Debian Jessie system.
> 
> I have a Type=forking service that fails on its first ExecStartPre command
> which is using /bin/mkdir to create a directory.
> 
> The service fails to start with the following.
> 
> Apr 13 10:07:42 localhost systemd[1]: Starting OVSDB Server Daemon...
> Apr 13 10:07:42 localhost systemd[4069]: Failed at step CHDIR spawning
> /bin/mkdir: No such file or directory
> Apr 13 10:07:42 localhost systemd[1]: ovsdb-server.service: control process
> exited, code=exited status=200
> Job for ovsdb-server.service failed. See 'systemctl status
> ovsdb-server.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.
> Apr 13 10:07:42 localhost systemd[1]: Failed to start OVSDB Server Daemon.
> Apr 13 10:07:42 localhost systemd[1]: Unit ovsdb-server.service entered
> failed state.
> a
> 
> I've verified that '/bin/mkdir' does exist and does run fine.  So I assume
> the the 'No such file or directory' refers to the target of the chdir.
> 
> My question is how do I troubleshoot from here?  What can I do to determine
> exactly what file or directory is not being found.  I'd like to understand
> what is wrong and fix it.

  CHDIR failure points to something related with directory.  Check
what directives you have in unit file - maybe WorkingDirectory= with
dir that do not exists? Or RootDirectory= ?
  Speculating further - maybe you are trying to mkdir directory which
you also put in RootDirectory= ?  This won't work, because /bin/mkdir is
run in the same environment that main process; but you can
 – investigate if PermissionStartOnly= (man systemd.service) will help you
 – use RuntimeDirectory= (man systemd.service) to automate directory
   creation
 - use tmpfiles to precreate all directories


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