+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1007520 +++

Description of problem:

On a server I installed the denyhosts package and enabled the service with
/bin/systemctl enable denyhosts.service.
In order to test the service before reboot I started with command: /bin/systemctl start denyhosts.service and got the following error messages:

systemd[1]: denyhosts.service operation timed out. Terminating.
systemd[1]: Unit denyhosts.service entered failed state.
systemd[1]: Failed to start SSH log watcher.
systemd[1]: Unit denyhosts.service entered failed state.

I tried to restart it (even with a reboot) via 
/bin/systemctl restart denyhosts.service and got the same error messages.
Stracing the whole thing brought no results.

The solution to the problem was, to start the denyhosts service without using systemd: /usr/bin/denyhosts.py --daemon --config=/etc/denyhosts.conf.
This took a pretty long time but went through without any error messages.

After this I could even start, stop and restart denyhosts via systemd with the above mentioned commands.

So this may be rather a systemd bug than a denyhosts bug.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

denyhosts-2.6-28.fc19.noarch

--- Additional comment from Ralf Baechle on 2014-08-13 11:03:36 EDT ---

I'm also observing the exact same issue on Fedora 20.