[Mageia-dev] systemd + separate /var (was Re: more testing for systemd: defaulting to it)

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Sander Lepik at 12/09/11 07:22 did gyre and gimble:
> 08.09.2011 16:53, Thierry Vignaud kirjutas:
>> Hi
>>
>> In order to got more testing for systemd, I'm considering switching
>> the installer to:
>> - install it
>> - default to it (aka add "init=/bin/systemd")
>>
>> WDYT?
>>
>> See you
> I got another problem. This time with /var. For two systems i have
> created /var as a separate volume on LVM. And systemd can't start /var.
> It's complaining that some deps failed. So long i only noticed different
> types of loggers that won't start. Also complaining about failed deps.
> So is there a loop? Loggers won't start as they want to log on /var and
> /var can't be mounted as it needs some logger to log it?! I'll try to
> test it more on VM but so long it seems that separated /var is causing
> boot problems :S (one system didn't start at all (and has weird
> repeating errors:
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4210594/IMG_20110911_230902.jpg ) so i have to
> revert back to sysvinit).

OK, so unless you use rsyslog, I think there could easily be a logging loop.

I packaged the latest rsyslog with all the systemd goodness a couple
weeks back so it should be cool now.

You should definitely mount /var before starting your logger, (systemd
will happily pass over any accumulated log output to the actual logger
when it starts - well not quite systemd, passing it over, but it happens
magically anyway!)

So the question is "Why isn't /var mounted early enough?".

I'm not really in a position to think about why this is right now, but
suffice to say, the auto mounter in systemd should really automatically
mount /var as soon as it's needed, so perhaps the logger is somehow
starting before the automounter?


If you do: "man systemd.special"  and look for info about
local-fs.target, it contains some interesting info about how /etc/fstab
is processed.

Primarily it needs the "auto" keyword in the options. Perhaps if you add
"auto" to the mount options (should be harmless for non-systemd) then
things will work fine?

Worth a shot.

Col




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Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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