Arch Linux

headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,983

[Solved] /var/log/journal permissions with systemd 208-1

(1/2) upgrading systemd
warning: directory permissions differ on /var/log/journal/
filesystem: 755  package: 2755
(2/2) upgrading systemd-sysvcompat

Is this a minor mistake?

Edit: this is expected behavior and does not require any interaction on the users part.

Last edited by headkase (2013-10-03 15:51:35)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [Solved] /var/log/journal permissions with systemd 208-1

Please check th bugtracker before posting https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/37170

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 12,410

Website

Re: [Solved] /var/log/journal permissions with systemd 208-1

Looks intentional:

https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit … eed2c7b759

I couldn't see any mention of why setgid needs to be set on that dir on Arch mailing lists, but there might be something on the systemd ones.

Edit: Or Karol will know.

Last edited by WorMzy (2013-10-03 15:48:49)

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headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,983

Re: [Solved] /var/log/journal permissions with systemd 208-1

Thanks karol, my bad.

mamamia88

Member

Registered: 2012-08-29

Posts: 483

Re: [Solved] /var/log/journal permissions with systemd 208-1

So just for the record I just updated and ran into this as well.   I went ahead and ran sudo chmod +2755 /var/log/journal/ was that the right course of action?

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [Solved] /var/log/journal permissions with systemd 208-1

What were the permissions before you run chmod? They're already

$ stat -c %a /var/log/journal
2755

after installing systemd 208.

headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,983

Re: [Solved] /var/log/journal permissions with systemd 208-1

So just for the record I just updated and ran into this as well.   I went ahead and ran sudo chmod +2755 /var/log/journal/ was that the right course of action?

Check the link karol posted: some tmpfiles will do everything that is needed - you don't need to do anything.  The updated tmpfiles which do this are part of the new systemd.

mamamia88

Member

Registered: 2012-08-29

Posts: 483

Re: [Solved] /var/log/journal permissions with systemd 208-1

So just for the record I just updated and ran into this as well.   I went ahead and ran sudo chmod +2755 /var/log/journal/ was that the right course of action?

Check the link karol posted: some tmpfiles will do everything that is needed - you don't need to do anything.  The updated tmpfiles which do this are part of the new systemd.

Ah cool.  I have no idea what the permissions where before but running the command above shows same expected output as above.  Just weird that they would throw out a warning if it was the intended behavior.

weirddan455

Member

Registered: 2012-04-15

Posts: 209

Re: [Solved] /var/log/journal permissions with systemd 208-1

So just for the record I just updated and ran into this as well.   I went ahead and ran sudo chmod +2755 /var/log/journal/ was that the right course of action?

Check the link karol posted: some tmpfiles will do everything that is needed - you don't need to do anything.  The updated tmpfiles which do this are part of the new systemd.

Ah cool.  I have no idea what the permissions where before but running the command above shows same expected output as above.  Just weird that they would throw out a warning if it was the intended behavior.

This was bugging me too so I did some digging.  I manually extracted the systemd-208-1 and systemd-207-5 tarballs from /var/cache/pacman/pkg into a test folder in /home (don't do this as root just in case you mistype your tar command!)  One gotcha I found when trying to view original permissions is you need to set the -p switch in tar to retain original permissions or it will set everything to be owned by your user.

Permissions in sytemd-207-5 for /var/log/journal:

stat -c '%A %a %n' *
drwxr-xr-x 755 journal

And for systemd-208-1:

stat -c '%A %a %n' *
drwxr-sr-x 2755 journal

I assume Pacman doesn't change directory permissions automatically because they had to include code in the post-install script to do so for you (present in systemd-208-1 but not in systemd-207-5):

_208_changes() {
  chown root:systemd-journal var/log/journal
  chmod 2755 var/log/journal

Really the only "bug" here is that Pacman is checking the permissions BEFORE the post-install script, printing the warning, and then running the post-install script that fixes it.  Perhaps in the next update Pacman should do this check AFTER the post-install script.