[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#762278: dbus: New syslog messages in Testing (esp. regarding systemd)

[Simon McVittie]

Control: retitle 762278 dbus: please add logcheck rules
Control: severity 762278 wishlist
Control: clone 762278 -1
Control: retitle -1 dbus-daemon-launch-helper: log to syslog?
Control: tags -1 - patch
Control: forwarded -1 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66728

Which of the following packages do you have, and for the ones you do
have, which versions: systemd, systemd-sysv, systemd-shim, sysvinit-core?

Are you running systemd as pid 1?

Before the upgrade from stable to testing that you described, were you
running systemd as pid 1?

If you switched from sysvinit to systemd: which of the messages you
described, if any, were between the point at which you installed
systemd-sysv or otherwise selected systemd as pid 1, and the point at
which you rebooted into systemd?

On 20/09/14 15:13, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:
>    sneo dbus[]: [system] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.login1' failed: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1

It is unclear whether this is bad or not. It could be; the only
information we get back from dbus-daemon-launch-helper is an exit code.
This is reporting that either dbus-daemon-launch-helper, or what it
executed (/lib/systemd/systemd-logind-launch), exited 1. Why that
happened is anyone's guess.

You would probably get better debuggability here by using systemd as pid
1 (under systemd, activated D-Bus services' stdout/stderr goes via the
Journal to syslog; otherwise, their stdout/stderr to /dev/null, unless
they take steps to log stuff themselves).

Alternatively, you could try altering
/usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.freedesktop.login1.service so that
instead of executing /lib/systemd/systemd-logind-launch, it executes a
shell script that runs /lib/systemd/systemd-logind-launch with its
stdout and stderr piped to logger(1).

If there is indeed a problem here after investigating further, please
clone a bug for that, and reassign/alter severity as necessary.

I have cloned this bug to suggest that dbus-daemon-launch-helper (which
is a trusted, security-sensitive setuid-root process) should maybe log
more info to syslog itself, and marked it as forwarded to the upstream
bug where I suggested the same.

This general class of message (for arbitrary services) should not be
added to the logcheck filter, but see below...

>    sneo dbus[]: [system] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1' failed: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1

This is expected if you are not running systemd as pid 1, because
systemd has:

 % grep -v '^#'
/usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.freedesktop.systemd1.service

[D-BUS Service]
Name=org.freedesktop.systemd1
Exec=/bin/false
User=root

as a way to say "I am responsible for the org.freedesktop.systemd1 name,
but its activation under pid 1 != systemd should fail".

(With pid 1 = systemd, systemd claims its own bus name on the system bus
as soon as possible, and this file is not used.)

This exact, specific instance of "Launch helper exited with unknown
return code 1" might be OK to filter by default, since it is expected on
sysvinit and Upstart systems.

>    sneo dbus[]: [system] Activating service name='whatever' (using servicehelper)

This is not an error. It's only logged to provide some visibility into
what dbus-daemon is doing. It could safely be added to a logcheck file.

>    sneo dbus[]: [system] Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.UDisks2': timed out

This means we tried to activate udisks2, but after an arbitrary timeout
(if you haven't deliberately reconfigured it, the default is 25 seconds)
it had still not requested its bus name. Debugging why that happens
would be a udisks2 issue, and might be easier with systemd as pid 1.

This indicates either a bug in something, or transient breakage between
upgrade and next reboot, and should not be in the logcheck file. It is
not unexpected for an upgrade from stable to testing, or oldstable to
stable, to generate unusual log messages; it *is* unexpected to get this
message in normal operation.

>    sneo dbus[]: [system] Reloaded configuration

This is benign and can safely be added to a logcheck file.

>    sneo dbus[]: [system] Successfully activated service 'whatever'

This is benign and can safely be added to a logcheck file.

    S