[Bug 1793572] [NEW] systemd-logind crashes with NIS users

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

You have been subscribed to a public bug:

Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Release:        18.04


In a fresh Ubuntu 18.04.1 install, after having set up NIS for connecting to my company's network, I noticed several problems happening when I tried to log in with my NIS user account.

Initially logged in with a local user, I set up NIS client, and
confirmed that NIS queries were OK, and then I tried to "ssh
my_nis_acct at localhost", which hanged for a while, and them my X session
crashed.

Attempts to log in on the text console produced the following behavior:
after typing in the password and getting some session-related messages,
the login process hanged for 25 seconds, during which the machine became
pretty much unusable, but then the login completed.  However, a couple
of minutes later, the X session of the local user (which was left open
at tty1) suddenly died.  That situation was consistently reproducible.

Googling words related to the symptoms (most especially the 25-second hangs), I came across a bug report for Fedora, stating that the culprit would be nss_nis (cf. 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1576558 and https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2018-78f95660f9).

As an workaround, I disabled pam_systemd.so in every PAM module that
referred to it.  Now I could login freely with NIS-based accounts, but
lost the facilities of systemd-logind.

After having has an idea about who the culprit was and managing to
restore login for NIS-based users, I indeed saw messages in
/var/log/syslog that showed at the time when systemd-logind crashed,
indeed consistently preceded by another indicating something wrong
related to some NIS query, such as shown in the excerpt below.

-----------------------------
Sep 15 07:51:36 my-machine systemd-logind[26803]: do_ypcall: clnt_call: RPC: Unable to send; errno = Operation not permitted
Sep 15 07:54:36 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Watchdog timeout (limit 3min)!
Sep 15 07:54:36 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Killing process 26803 (systemd-logind) with signal SIGABRT.
Sep 15 07:54:37 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Main process exited, code=dumped, status=6/ABRT
Sep 15 07:54:37 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Failed with result 'watchdog'.
Sep 15 07:54:37 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Service has no hold-off time, scheduling restart.
Sep 15 07:54:37 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 2.
Sep 15 08:10:29 my-machine systemd-logind[1804]: do_ypcall: clnt_call: RPC: Unable to send; errno = Operation not permitted
Sep 15 08:13:06 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Watchdog timeout (limit 3min)!
Sep 15 08:13:06 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Killing process 1804 (systemd-logind) with signal SIGABRT.
Sep 15 08:13:07 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Main process exited, code=dumped, status=6/ABRT
Sep 15 08:13:07 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Failed with result 'watchdog'.
Sep 15 08:13:07 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Service has no hold-off time, scheduling restart.
Sep 15 08:13:07 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 1.
Sep 15 08:13:38 my-machine systemd-logind[7153]: do_ypcall: clnt_call: RPC: Unable to send; errno = Operation not permitted
Sep 15 08:16:07 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Watchdog timeout (limit 3min)!
Sep 15 08:16:07 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Killing process 7153 (systemd-logind) with signal SIGABRT.
Sep 15 08:16:07 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Main process exited, code=dumped, status=6/ABRT
Sep 15 08:16:07 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Failed with result 'watchdog'.
Sep 15 08:16:07 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Service has no hold-off time, scheduling restart.
Sep 15 08:16:07 my-machine systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 2.
--------------------

I wonder if the fix that was applied in Fedora might work for Ubuntu as
well.

** Affects: systemd (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: bot-comment
-- 
systemd-logind crashes with NIS users
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1793572
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to systemd in Ubuntu.