systemd-journald hangs on every boot

tavianator · 2015-03-18 20:22:56

Every time I boot my computer, this happens:

Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: systemd-journald.service watchdog timeout (limit 1min)!
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: systemd-journald.service: main process exited, code=dumped, status=6/ABRT
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: Failed to start Journal Service.
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: Dependency failed for Flush Journal to Persistent Storage.
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: Job systemd-journal-flush.service/start failed with result 'dependency'.
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: Unit systemd-journald.service entered failed state.
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: systemd-journald.service failed.
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: systemd-journald.service has no holdoff time, scheduling restart.
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: Stopping Journal Service...
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: Listening on Journal Audit Socket.
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd[1]: Starting Journal Service...
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd-coredump[442]: Detected coredump of the journal daemon itself, diverted to /var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.systemd-journal.0.19d3f826e408435fad28a3b74c48ec38.199.1426708853000000
Mar 18 16:00:54 cosmicray systemd-journal[444]: Journal started

The console says "A start job is running for Journal Service" until the watchdog kills the journal process, after which it restarts and everything usually works. Occasionally it will hang again and say "no limit", preventing the system from booting at all.

I've deleted all the logs in /var/log/journal so I don't think it's a corrupt log causing this. Any ideas?

Last edited by tavianator (2015-03-27 14:12:29)

Knute · 2015-03-19 00:02:55

Do you have some ... or rather did you have some sort of external drive attached to the system at one point?

I ask because your error is saying that the failure is in relation to flushing the journal to persistent storage, which implies that there is some external medium that may not be where it is expected.

tavianator · 2015-03-27 14:12:10

Nope. I mean I've plugged flash drives into it but that's it.

Chazza · 2015-04-01 10:18:59

You could try liming journal size: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … size_limit

and disabling journaling of coredumps: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … journaling

tavianator · 2015-04-04 22:50:20

Already did both those things (journal is limited to 100M).

firekage · 2015-04-05 00:37:22

Could you stop journal service, delete related stuff (logs and only logs, do not delete directory for it) and start it again? Maybe it will fix the problem?

Last edited by firekage (2015-04-05 00:38:33)

elifarley · 2015-08-03 14:19:53

Same problem here... no solution so far.

tavianator · 2015-08-03 17:31:02

I wonder if this is related: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/comm … 2a2edR2553

I've disabled COW on my system here and haven't seen issues since, but they were always intermittent and I don't reboot that often so I'm not sure it's fixed. I run BTRFS on many other computers without an issue, so I'm not totally convinced.

@firekage: I have nuked the entire /var/log/journal directory multiple times, and the issue has always come back after a while.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-03-18 20:22:56

systemd-journald hangs on every boot

#2 2015-03-19 00:02:55

Re: systemd-journald hangs on every boot

#3 2015-03-27 14:12:10

Re: systemd-journald hangs on every boot

#4 2015-04-01 10:18:59

Re: systemd-journald hangs on every boot

#5 2015-04-04 22:50:20

Re: systemd-journald hangs on every boot

#6 2015-04-05 00:37:22

Re: systemd-journald hangs on every boot

#7 2015-08-03 14:19:53

Re: systemd-journald hangs on every boot

#8 2015-08-03 17:31:02

Re: systemd-journald hangs on every boot

Board footer