Description of problem: Systemd started obstinated attempts to run systemd-fstab-generator. After running a while I counted 204 error messages like this: systemd-fstab-generator[255]: Failed to create unit file: File exists The first one showed up with "[ 11.510364]". The last one recorded prior to stopping count was at "[ 3376.010751]". Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): systemd-195-2.fc18.x86_64 How reproducible: I do not really know. There is always some "...teen" messages of that sort, which is disconcerting enough, but this time systemd overdid itself. So far I did not see such persistency here. Additional info: No idea if this is possibly related but at that time yum was running a massive update transaction with over a thousand packages in it.
Generators are run on every systemd reload. Packages that ship systemd unit files are expected to invoke 'systemctl daemon-reload' in their rpm scriptlets. Having systemd reload many times during a yum transaction with a thousand of packages is not surprising. The problem is that the generator encounters an error. Unfortunately the error message is not specific as to which unit was the one with the problem. I have improved the error messages in: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/commit/?id=40b8acd039cf1ea00167017e63d9c0a773002f0e There may be two reasons for the "File exists" error. Either we fail to clean up the generated unit directory before running the generators, or the generator's input data causes it to produce a single unit name more than once. Do you get a similar error message if do this?: P=/tmp/gentest mkdir $P /lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-fstab-generator $P $P $P (You will surely get the error if you run the last command twice. I'm curious if you get the error on the first run too.)
(In reply to comment #1) > Generators are run on every systemd reload. Packages that ship systemd unit > files are expected to invoke 'systemctl daemon-reload' in their rpm > scriptlets. Having systemd reload many times during a yum transaction with a > thousand of packages is not surprising. 929 of these updated packages were various components of texlive-2012-5.20121024_r28063.fc19 update. Not good candidates for daemon-reload. This leaves 191 of other assorted components. I did not try to count how many times 'systemctl daemon-reload' may be called by this bunch but 204 seems to be excessive. > The problem is that the generator encounters an error. On every boot I see seventeen, or so, of these. I think that I mentioned that on the first time in bug 840242 on 2012/Jul/14. That report was talking about booting troubles and at that time it looked like these messages could be relevant. In a retrospect this was distraction but error messages stayed - does not matter if booting is broken or not. > Do you get a similar error message if do this?: > P=/tmp/gentest > mkdir $P > /lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-fstab-generator $P $P $P Yes, I do. The same seventeen times. 204/17 is 12 so maybe this 'systemctl daemon-reload' was called 11 times during an update transaction and once while booting? Running the above created for me in /tmp/gentest 10 directories, 18 files and 18 symlinks and those 17 error messages. Re-running a generator part ended up with 35 errors. > (You will surely get the error if you run the last command twice. I'm > curious if you get the error on the first run too.) If the error is inconsequential then maybe systemd-fstab-generator should check for a presence of file and silently move on if already there? If, OTOH, a fresh content is important then why not just clobber the old one and complain only if this is not possible?
(In reply to comment #2) > On every boot I see seventeen, or so, of these. I think that I mentioned > that on the first time in bug 840242 on 2012/Jul/14. Hm, I see. Is this still the current fstab?: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=840242#c8 If not, please attach the current /etc/fstab. > > Do you get a similar error message if do this?: > > P=/tmp/gentest > > mkdir $P > > /lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-fstab-generator $P $P $P > > Yes, I do. The same seventeen times. 204/17 is 12 so maybe this > 'systemctl daemon-reload' was called 11 times during an update transaction > and once while booting? Yes, this is likely. Could you please do the experiment again, with a new subdirectory under tmp, and with the last command run under "strace -o trace.txt ..."? And then attach the trace.txt. > If the error is inconsequential then maybe systemd-fstab-generator should > check for a presence of file and silently move on if already there? We still haven't identified the root cause, so I'd rather not hide the error yet.
(In reply to comment #3) > (In reply to comment #2) > > On every boot I see seventeen, or so, of these. I think that I mentioned > > that on the first time in bug 840242 on 2012/Jul/14. > > Hm, I see. Is this still the current fstab?: > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=840242#c8 Yes, nothing changed here. This is only a subset of filesystems on a hardware. This is a test box with many different installations on it. > Could you please do the experiment again, with a new subdirectory under tmp, > and with the last command run under "strace -o trace.txt ..."? And then > attach the trace.txt. Oh, I see. I have also various 'noauto' entries to prevent some demented software from sticking its nose where it definitely does not belong. 18 of those are using a nominal mount point /mnt/jnk. That would correspond to these 17 "Failed to create unit file". Good! Nobody asked for that. The only not-good is that it not failed 18 times.
Created attachment 641871 [details] strace results for systemd-fstab-generator
(In reply to comment #4) > I have also various 'noauto' entries Since they're not in the fstab that you attached, could you please paste me an example of at least two of them?
(In reply to comment #6) > > Since they're not in the fstab that you attached, could you please paste me > an example of at least two of them? These "noauto" entries look like that: LABEL=/Cent /mnt/jnk ext3 noauto 0 0 LABEL=/Cent32 /mnt/jnk ext3 noauto 0 0 LABEL=/FA /mnt/jnk ext3 noauto 0 0 Actually I would rather have a more effective way to tell "keep out" to various software pieces and that includes systemd.
systemd parses fstab in order to have its internal representation in the form of mount units. This fstab use case looks valid - it allows the user to call "mount -L <label>" with the expected result. It exposes a limitation of systemd mount units. They are uniquely named based on the mount point path. systemd's model cannot represent multiple mount units having the same mount point. Nevertheless, it does not seem that we need to overcome this limitation. The user won't be using systemctl to mount these filesystems. Here's what we could do: - Detect this situation explicitly, rather than discovering it accidentally by EEXIST. (Implementation hint: use a hash table; emit the unit files all at the end.) - Define how the conflict shall be resolved. Should the first line win? Should the last one win? Maybe the cleanest way would be to emit no unit file at all. - Instead of printing an error per conflicting line, print only one message for the whole conflicting group, with severity 'warning'. Whether to add a fstab option ("x-systemd.ignore") to ignore a line entirely is orthogonal to the above.
(In reply to comment #8) > - Define how the conflict shall be resolved. Should the first line win? > Should the last one win? Maybe the cleanest way would be to emit no unit > file at all. Here's an idea: The last one without 'noauto' should win. If all of them are 'noauto', emit no unit file.
(In reply to comment #8) > Maybe the cleanest way would be to emit no unit file > at all. That would be an expected behaviour from my POV. OTOH means to mark some partitions with "do not even try to think about it" would be most welcome in some situations.
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