Bug#881725: apache2: reload fails inside (libvirt) lxc container
On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 02:34:00PM -0400, Matthew Gabeler-Lee wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Apr 2018, Stefan Fritsch wrote:
>
> > This seems to be a systemd bug. Changing PrivateTmp from true to false in
> > apache2.service fixes the issue. But even with PrivateTmp it works for
> > some time. It would be interesting what is the trigger to make it fail
> > later on.
>
> Hmm ... I was having a problem on some systems where tmpreaper, in its
> default configuration, will eventually delete all the directories systemd
> creates to support PrivateTmp, which might explain this...
Just for the record, we've also tracked it down to the use of PrivateTmp
(but I hadn't followed up on this bug since we haven't analysed this to full
extent). The workaround deployed is here:
https://github.com/wikimedia/puppet/commit/388d0141ef3b78471eb81b59e1ccb196adf49872
It's specific to our configuration for Mediawiki application servers, but
those are fairly complex to begin with (e.g. there's various Mediawiki extensions
which shell out to external binaries (e.g. to convert musical typesheets edited in
Wikimedia projects)).
I wouldn't call this a bug in systemd, it's probably something local in the setup
of the various components using /tmp (and we don't have this problem on
our non-mediawiki stretch Apache setups). Using PrivateTmp in apache.service
by default seems totally sensible to me.
As such, I'd recommend to simply close this bug. Anyone searching for that
error message via a search engine will hopefully find it as a useful
reference.
Cheers,
Moritz
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