Bug#959985: ifupdown-pre.service: Failed to start Helper to synchronize boot up for ifupdown

[Jonas Meurer]

Package: ifupdown
Version: 0.8.35
Followup-For: Bug #959985
Control: severity -1 important

Hello,

I hit the same bug on a freshly installed Debian Buster system. It's a server
system with two NICs (eno1 + eno2) but only eno1 has a link. My interface config
is to have a bridge br0 started with eno1 as only bridge port.

Additionally, eno1 is started with an IP during initramfs in order to allow
remote LUKS unlocking by setting the `ip` kernel boot parameter. Maybe that's
related.

In my case, the failing `ifupdown-pre.service` results in the interface `br0`
not being brought up at all, leading to no network after boot.

The best workaround I found was to mask `ifupdown-pre.service`:

# systemctl mask ifupdown-pre.service

Afterwards, the system boots up without delay and interface `br0` is brought up
at boot.

Cheers
jonas


-- Package-specific info:
--- /etc/network/interfaces:
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

--- /etc/network/interfaces.d/*:
# WAN bridge
auto br0
iface br0 inet static
bridge_ports eno1
# disable spanning tree protocol
bridge_stp off
bridge_fd 0
bridge_maxwait 0
address 172.16.42.10/24
gateway 172.16.42.1

--- up and down scripts installed:
/etc/network/if-down.d:
total 0

/etc/network/if-post-down.d:
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Jan 28 2019 bridge -> /lib/bridge-utils/ifupdown.sh

/etc/network/if-pre-up.d:
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Jan 28 2019 bridge -> /lib/bridge-utils/ifupdown.sh

/etc/network/if-up.d:
total 0

[Richard Sonnenfeld]

Package: ifupdown
Version: 0.8.37
Followup-For: Bug #959985
X-Debbugs-Cc: ***@nmt.edu

Dear Maintainer,

This is my first bug report -- but am a 20 year Linux user and hope I
am doing it right. My main point is that this bug persists in 0.8.37
and the "important" severity is justified. The effect of this bug for
those of us who still use /etc/network/interfaces to wrest control from
NetworkManager is to make this impossible. So one workaround that
I tested is to use NetworkManager, unpleasant as it is, to configure interfaces.
The other successful workaround (my preference) is that suggested by Jonas Meurer.

"systemctl mask ifupdown-pre.service".
============================================
Let me add the output of
"systemctl status ifupdown-pre.service"
This occurs before it is masked, obviously, and also when the interfaces
have not been defined in network manager (but do exist in /etc/network/interfaces)

● ifupdown-pre.service - Helper to synchronize boot up for ifupdown
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/ifupdown-pre.service; static)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2022-08-08 11:25:14 MDT; 1min 15s ago
Process: 354 ExecStart=/bin/sh -c if [ "$CONFIGURE_INTERFACES" != "no" ] && [ -n "$(ifquery --read-environment --list --exclude=lo)" ] && [ -x /bin/udevadm ]; then udevadm settle; fi (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 354 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
CPU: 4.226s

Aug 08 11:25:14 feynman systemd[1]: ifupdown-pre.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Aug 08 11:25:14 feynman systemd[1]: ifupdown-pre.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Aug 08 11:25:14 feynman systemd[1]: Failed to start Helper to synchronize boot up for ifupdown.
Aug 08 11:25:14 feynman systemd[1]: ifupdown-pre.service: Consumed 4.226s CPU time.

More background:

I have used Debian etch/stretch/jessie and I just upgraded to bullseye
and hit this problem. I am fortunate to have fixed/wired IP addresses which
I configure via /etc/network/interfaces (shown below).
Note that the error occurs both with the old names "eth0", "eth1"
and the "predictable names" enp1s0, enp2s10. (I switched back to eth0/eth1
because I thought perhaps the interface names hadn't been assigned yet
and that is why the network/interfaces file didn't work.) Regardless,
this bug does not seem to be affected by the interface naming convention
used.

Clearly, noobs who use NetworkManager and DHCP and pointy clicky things to configure their interface are well taken careof. This bug is freaking out
the old farts though. I thought perhaps support for the interfaces file
had been dropped entirely ... but clearly not.

-- All the best to you wonderful package maintainers.


-- Package-specific info:
--- /etc/network/interfaces:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 155.178.12.11
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 155.178.12.0
gateway 155.178.12.254

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 10.90.8.111
netmask 255.0.0.0
network 10.0.0.0
#gateway 10.90.8.254


#auto enp2s10
#iface enp2s10 inet static
#As above deleted for security reasons

# auto enp1s0
# iface enp1s0 inet static
#As above deleted for security reasons

--- up and down scripts installed:
/etc/network/if-down.d:
total 8
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1015 Feb 6 2021 avahi-autoipd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 372 May 14 2021 openvpn
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Feb 25 2021 wpasupplicant -> ../../wpa_supplicant/ifupdown.sh

/etc/network/if-post-down.d:
total 4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1409 Mar 7 2020 wireless-tools
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Feb 25 2021 wpasupplicant -> ../../wpa_supplicant/ifupdown.sh

/etc/network/if-pre-up.d:
total 8
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4191 Mar 7 2020 wireless-tools
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Feb 25 2021 wpasupplicant -> ../../wpa_supplicant/ifupdown.sh

/etc/network/if-up.d:
total 8
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 923 Feb 6 2021 avahi-autoipd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 385 May 14 2021 openvpn
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Feb 25 2021 wpasupplicant -> ../../wpa_supplicant/ifupdown.sh


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.2
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-12-amd64 (SMP w/6 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages ifupdown depends on:
ii adduser 3.118ubuntu2
ii iproute2 5.10.0-4
ii libc6 2.33-8
ii lsb-base 11.1.0

Versions of packages ifupdown recommends:
ii isc-dhcp-client [dhcp-client] 4.4.1-2.3

Versions of packages ifupdown suggests:
ii ppp 2.4.9-1+1
pn rdnssd <none>

-- no d