[Bug 1750780] Re: Race with local file systems can make open-vm-tools fail to start

[Chris Halse Rogers]

Hello ChristianEhrhardt, or anyone else affected,

Accepted open-vm-tools into xenial-proposed. The package will build now
and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/open-vm-
tools/2:10.2.0-3~ubuntu0.16.04.1 in a few hours, and then in the
-proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package.  See
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how
to enable and use -proposed.Your feedback will aid us getting this
update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug,
mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from
verification-needed-xenial to verification-done-xenial. If it does not
fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the
tag to verification-failed-xenial. In either case, without details of
your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification .  Thank you in
advance!

** Changed in: open-vm-tools (Ubuntu Xenial)
       Status: Triaged => Fix Committed

** Tags added: verification-needed verification-needed-xenial

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1750780

Title:
  Race with local file systems can make open-vm-tools fail to start

Status in cloud-init:
  Invalid
Status in open-vm-tools package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in systemd package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in open-vm-tools source package in Xenial:
  Fix Committed
Status in systemd source package in Xenial:
  New
Status in open-vm-tools source package in Artful:
  Triaged
Status in open-vm-tools package in Debian:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  Since the change in [1] open-vm-tools-service starts very (very) early.
  Not so much due to the 
  Before=cloud-init-local.service
  But much more by
  DefaultDependencies=no

  That can trigger an issue that looks like
  root at ubuntuguest:~# systemctl status -l open-vm-tools.service
  ● open-vm-tools.service - Service for virtual machines hosted on VMware
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/open-vm-tools.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: failed (Result: resources)

  
  As it is right now open-vm-tools can race with the other early start and then fail.
  In detail one can find a message like:
    open-vm-tools.service: Failed to run 'start' task: Read-only file system"

  This is due to privtaeTmp=yes which is also set needing a writable
  /var/tmp [2]

  To ensure this works PrivateTmp would have to be removed (not good) or some after dependencies added that make this work reliably.
  I added
  After=local-fs.target
  which made it work for me in 3/3 tests.

  I' like to have an ack by the cloud-init Team that this does not totally kill the originally intended Before=cloud-init-local.service
  I think it does not as local-fs can complete before cloud-init-local, then open-vm-tools can initialize and finally cloud-init-local can pick up the data.

  To summarize:
  # cloud-init-local #
  DefaultDependencies=no
  Wants=network-pre.target
  After=systemd-remount-fs.service
  Before=NetworkManager.service
  Before=network-pre.target
  Before=shutdown.target
  Before=sysinit.target
  Conflicts=shutdown.target
  RequiresMountsFor=/var/lib/cloud

  # open-vm-tools #
  DefaultDependencies=no
  Before=cloud-init-local.service

  Proposed is to add to the latter:
  After=local-fs.target

  [1]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=859677
  [2]: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5610

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