[Bug 1971935] Re: Invalid pipefs-directory prevents rpc-gssd.service from starting

[Andreas Hasenack]

The commit that introduced the generator has this explanation:
commit 3892174834ea1a4729348f0ecd3078cc1d5458e4
Author: Scott Mayhew <smayhew at redhat.com>
Date:   Mon Apr 10 07:10:45 2017 -0400

    systemd: add a generator for the rpc_pipefs mountpoint
    
    The nfs.conf has config options for the rpc_pipefs mountpoint.
    Currently, changing these from the default also requires manually
    overriding the systemd unit files that are hard-coded to mount the
    filesystem on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs.
    
    This patch adds a generator that creates a mount unit file for the
    rpc_pipefs when a non-default value is specified in /etc/nfs.conf, as
    well as a target unit file to override the dependencies for the systemd
    units using the rpc_pipefs.  The blkmapd, idmapd, and gssd service unit
    files have been modified to define their dependencies on the rpc_pipefs
    mountpoint indirectly via the rpc_pipefs target unit file.  Since both
    rpc-pipefs-generator.c and nfs-server-generator.c need to convert path
    names to unit file names, that functionality has been moved to
    systemd.c.
    
    This patch also removes the dependency on the rpc_pipefs from the
    rpc-svcgssd.service unit file.  rpc.svcgssd uses the sunrpc cache
    mechanism to exchange data with the kernel, not the rpc_pipefs.

I guess one way to avoid this would be for us to ship the var-lib-...
mount unit with a path matching the default we have in /etc/nfs.conf...

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1971935

Title:
  Invalid pipefs-directory prevents rpc-gssd.service from starting

Status in nfs-utils package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Ubuntu 22.04 Server
  Package version: 1:2.6.1-1ubuntu1

  Package nfs-common/nfs-utils provides /etc/nfs.conf and /lib/systemd/system/rpc-gssd.service.
  /etc/nfs.conf (and seems to be copied from /usr/share/nfs-common/conffiles/nfs.conf) has the configuration:
  ...
  [general]
  pipefs-directory=/run/rpc_pipefs
  ...

  When attempting to start rpc-gssd it gives the following error:
  ...
  ERROR: opendir(/run/rpc_pipefs) failed: No such file or directory
  ...

  There is a systemd unit called var-lib-nfs-rpc_pipefs.mount which
  mounts this directory as /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs. However this does
  not match with the configuration in nfs.conf

  It's worth mentioning that sometimes it seems a systemd unit is
  generated (run-rpc_pipefs.mount) which ensures /run/rpc_pipefs is
  created and everything works as expected. Seems to be random.

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