[systemd-devel] Issue with systemd / journalctl

[Simon McVittie]

On Tue, 27 Dec 2022 at 18:44:42 +0100, systemd at sioban.net wrote:
> I've discovered it's linked to selinux filesystem not mounted
> (don't ask me why, I'm still trying to dig into this...)

Debian does not use SELinux by default (the default LSM is AppArmor), so
if you are using SELinux, you're already in an unusual configuration that
might cause some weird things to happen.

Another thing to watch out for when using LSMs is that they often try hard
to avoid exposing information that could be useful to an attacker, which
might mean that the debug information available to you is incomplete.

On Mon, 26 Dec 2022 at 22:27:52 +0000, Barry wrote:
> > On 26 Dec 2022, at 14:02, systemd at sioban.net wrote:
> > I've re-installed systemd-sysv and rebooted, cleaned old journalctl entries but same issues.
> 
> Why do you need the sysv package on a systemd system at all?

It is correct to have systemd-sysv installed on any Debian-derived system
(Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) that will boot using systemd. That package means
"use systemd as init, replacing sysv-rc" because of some implementation
details of how Debian handled the switch from sysv-rc to systemd as its
default init system.

With hindsight, it would have been better if systemd-sysv had been named
systemd-as-init or something, or if it was named systemd and the current
systemd package (which has the actual executables) was instead named
systemd-bin - but renaming packages while maintaining backwards-compat is
really awkward, so we try not to.

The systemd-sysv package only contains a few symbolic links, so
reinstalling it is unlikely to help you much. If reinstalling anything
from the systemd source would have an effect, it would be systemd,
or possibly udev.

I agree that Debian support channels are likely to be a better place to
start for this sort of issue, since people in Debian will be more aware
of the finer points of how things were packaged in whatever Debian release
you're using. Please mention up-front that you are using SELinux, because
that's probably significant and will have an effect on what to try first.

    smcv