doc: Try to clarify automount dependency confusion
authorChris Down <chris@chrisdown.name>
Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:43:05 +0000 (14:43 +0100)
committerZbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek <zbyszek@in.waw.pl>
Mon, 27 Jul 2020 08:26:32 +0000 (10:26 +0200)
commita2d46b646826d650ad327a301031d19650b1c261
tree1f3b0b3a40cc8ae8f8300052b61e939ca6d99477
parent20d8a9e1a5a178a34b63f0d594edf78a07e6d8a4
doc: Try to clarify automount dependency confusion

Arch recently upgraded systemd to 245.6. Shortly afterwards, users began
reporting[0] that systemd detected an ordering cycle, and they were
unable to log in. The reason they were unable to log in was because of
ordering cycle resolution:

    [...]
    systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Job systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service/start deleted to break ordering cycle starting with sysinit.target/start
    systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Job systemd-update-done.service/start deleted to break ordering cycle starting with sysinit.target/start
    systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Job systemd-journal-catalog-update.service/start deleted to break ordering cycle starting with sysinit.target/start
    systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Job local-fs.target/start deleted to break ordering cycle starting with sysinit.target/start
    systemd[1]: sysinit.target: Job systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service/start deleted to break ordering cycle starting with sysinit.target/start
    [...]

Whether the resolution did the right thing here or not is a longer-term
discussion, but in the interim we should at least make this distinction
between automount dependencies and mount dependencies clearer in the
documentation, so that users and distribution maintainers know what's
acceptable. In this case Arch actually backed out b3d7aef5 entirely and
released a new version due to the confusion.

Also see https://github.com/systemd/systemd-stable/issues/69.

0: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/66908
(cherry picked from commit 69876f94abc3f5861e87ad287b8d1f6770c6fdce)
man/systemd.automount.xml