[systemd-devel] How to debug systemd services failing to start with 11/SEGV?

[Lennart Poettering]

On Di, 09.04.24 14:42, Alexander Dahl (ada at thorsis.com) wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I'm currently trying to build a firmware for an embedded device and
> running into trouble because systemd seems to crash.  The BSP is
> based on pengutronix DistroKit (master) built with ptxdist and the
> target is the Microchip SAM9X60-Curiosity board, which is arm v5te
> architecture (that board is not part of DistroKit, support for that is
> in an upper layer of mine not public yet (?)).
>
> Everything is quite recent, building systemd version 255.2 currently.
> On startup I get messages like this (this is the first one, later on
> there are lot more, all with the same status):
>
>    [   11.175650] systemd[1]: systemd-journald.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=11/SEGV
>    [   11.239679] systemd[1]: systemd-journald.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
>    [   11.292640] systemd[1]: Failed to start systemd-journald.service.
>    [FAILED] Failed to start systemd-journald.service.
>    See 'systemctl status systemd-journald.service' for details.
>
> The system drops me on a shell later, where I can run the above
> mentioned command, which gives:
>
>     ~ # systemctl status systemd-journald.service
>     x systemd-journald.service - Journal Service
>          Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-journald.service; static)
>          Active: failed (Result: signal) since Tue 2024-04-09 11:44:52 UTC; 11min a>
>     TriggeredBy: x systemd-journald-dev-log.socket
>                  * systemd-journald-audit.socket
>                  x systemd-journald.socket
>            Docs: man:systemd-journald.service(8)
>                  man:journald.conf(5)
>         Process: 197 ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-journald (code=killed, sign>
>        Main PID: 197 (code=killed, signal=SEGV)
>        FD Store: 0 (limit: 4224)
>             CPU: 330ms
>
> This does not help me much.  Other services crashing: systemd-udevd
> and systemd-timesyncd, also with status 11/SEGV which is segmentation
> fault, right?

Yes.

> I had this board running with an older version of systemd, but I can
> not remember which was the last good version.
>
> Could anyone give me a hint please how to debug this?

"coredumpctl gdb" should get open the most recent backtrace for you.

The coredump should also show up in the logs with a backtrace.

Lennart

--
Lennart Poettering, Berlin