systemd units disabled when calling systemctl daemon-reload

[Vito Caputo]

On Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 07:06:22PM +0100, Etienne Cordonnier wrote:
> Hello,
> I am debugging some embedded system running systemd. The behavior I am
> observing is that many systemd targets such as multi-user.target are
> disabled after I run systemctl daemon-reload (as shown by systemctl
> list-units --type target --all). This causes many systemd units to be
> disabled, and forces me to reboot the system.
> 
> Is there a way to debug this systemd target transition? I already
> enabled systemctl
> log-level debug, but I still don't understand why the systemd target is
> changing when I call systemctl daemon-reload on this particular system.
> 

I haven't noticed this behavior myself, and attempted a repro here on
v253 (Arch x86_64) just now.

Others here on systemd-devel are likely to wonder what systemd version
you're using, and if you've attempted reproduction using a newer version
if not the latest.

If the version is old and a newer one fixes it, I'd be inclined to try
bisecting for identifying which changes fixed it.  But that assumes a
consistent ability to repro, and good vs. bad versions to work from.

Regards,
Vito Caputo