Note: This bug is displayed in read-only format because the product is no longer active in Red Hat Bugzilla.
RHEL Engineering is moving the tracking of its product development work on RHEL 6 through RHEL 9 to Red Hat Jira (issues.redhat.com). If you're a Red Hat customer, please continue to file support cases via the Red Hat customer portal. If you're not, please head to the "RHEL project" in Red Hat Jira and file new tickets here. Individual Bugzilla bugs in the statuses "NEW", "ASSIGNED", and "POST" are being migrated throughout September 2023. Bugs of Red Hat partners with an assigned Engineering Partner Manager (EPM) are migrated in late September as per pre-agreed dates. Bugs against components "kernel", "kernel-rt", and "kpatch" are only migrated if still in "NEW" or "ASSIGNED". If you cannot log in to RH Jira, please consult article #7032570. That failing, please send an e-mail to the RH Jira admins at rh-issues@redhat.com to troubleshoot your issue as a user management inquiry. The email creates a ServiceNow ticket with Red Hat. Individual Bugzilla bugs that are migrated will be moved to status "CLOSED", resolution "MIGRATED", and set with "MigratedToJIRA" in "Keywords". The link to the successor Jira issue will be found under "Links", have a little "two-footprint" icon next to it, and direct you to the "RHEL project" in Red Hat Jira (issue links are of type "https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-XXXX", where "X" is a digit). This same link will be available in a blue banner at the top of the page informing you that that bug has been migrated.

Bug 1885143

Summary: Services configured with ProtectSystem=strict don't start when NFS mounts are unreachable
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Reporter: Renaud Métrich <rmetrich>
Component: systemdAssignee: David Tardon <dtardon>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Petr Matyáš <pmatyas>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
Version: 8.2CC: dtardon, msekleta, ossman, pmatyas, systemd-maint-list, zbyszek
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: Bugfix, Triaged
Target Release: 8.0Flags: pm-rhel: mirror+
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: systemd-239-48.el8 Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2021-11-09 19:54:49 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Renaud Métrich 2020-10-05 08:55:51 UTC
Description of problem:

When NFS mounts are unreachable, no service configured with ProtectSystem=strict (or full) can start.

This affects the following services:
- systemd-localed
- systemd-hostnamed
- systemd-timedated
- systemd-coredump@

The result is affected commands hang:
- localectl
- hostnamectl

Similarly, services configured with InaccessiblePaths= properties cannot start either.

The reason is due to systemd's child (service starter) remounting all paths, including NFS mounts that are not reachable, hence hanging.
Then, due to timeouts in service startup, errors happen.

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

systemd-219+

How reproducible:

ALWAYS

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set up a NFS server exporting /mnt

2. On the RHEL8.2 client system, mount the directory

  # mount vm-nfs-server:/mnt /mnt

3. On the NFS server, drop all outgoing packets to the RHEL8.2 client

  # iptables -I OUTPUT -d 192.168.122.86/32 -j DROP

4. On the RHEL8.2 client system, execute "localectl"

  # localectl
  

Actual results:

Hang of command + journal shows systemd-localed cannot start:
-------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------
dbus-daemon[973]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.locale1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.locale1.service' requested by ':1.1117' (uid=0 pid=111619 comm="localectl " label="unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023")
systemd[1]: Starting Locale Service...
dbus-daemon[973]: [system] Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.locale1': timed out (service_start_timeout=25000ms)
-------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------

Expected results:

No hang

Additional info:

We need hardening of this.
The only solution I can think of is providing a new property to only mount local file systems.

Comment 2 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2020-10-27 10:39:30 UTC
Can you check if the issue is reproducible with a recent released version (but no later than v246)?
We used to always call statvfs, but now we go through a libmount path by default, and this should
avoid the issue.

Comment 3 Pierre Ossman 2020-10-27 10:46:11 UTC
How recent? Our RHEL 8 system which exhibits this is currently on 239, which I guess is not recent enough then.

Comment 4 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2020-10-27 11:58:31 UTC
The important commit is v242-1437-gd34a40082d. So anything between 243 and 246.

Comment 5 Pierre Ossman 2020-10-28 10:10:46 UTC
Can I get a package for RHEL 8 somewhere to test that? Or will I have to test it on Fedora instead?

Comment 6 David Tardon 2020-12-01 09:14:27 UTC
(In reply to Pierre Ossman from comment #5)
> Can I get a package for RHEL 8 somewhere to test that? Or will I have to
> test it on Fedora instead?

Here: http://people.redhat.com/dtardon/systemd/bz1885143-unreachable-nfs/

Comment 7 Pierre Ossman 2020-12-03 13:49:19 UTC
Thanks. I can confirm that with the updated packages I no longer get any issues starting systemd-localed with a wedged NFS mount.

Comment 8 Lukáš Nykrýn 2021-06-22 12:34:48 UTC
fix merged to github master branch -> https://github.com/redhat-plumbers/systemd-rhel8/pull/141

Comment 12 Petr Matyáš 2021-08-18 12:10:09 UTC
Verified on systemd-239-49.el8.x86_64

Comment 13 David Tardon 2021-10-18 10:37:16 UTC
*** Bug 2014528 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15 errata-xmlrpc 2021-11-09 19:54:49 UTC
Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory (systemd bug fix and enhancement update), and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2021:4469