On upgrade, systemctl and lightdm stop working, leaving the system in a degraded state

[Leonardo Müller]

When updating systemd on Jammy or when upgrading Focal to Jammy, it was noticed that when systemd restarts, it will crash lightdm. What is strange is that lightdm never restarts, new ttys don't start and systemctl stops working.

I would tell the system get in a degraded state with this particular crash: no easy way to restore the graphical interface, no way to start new ttys and systemctl don't work.

When trying to restart lightdm using systemctl, I get the following:

Failed to get properties: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1': timed out (service_start_timeout=25000ms)

The upgrade process is still running in the background, but it's hard to return to the graphical interface. I believe this can be a dangerous situation, as the user would be compelled to reboot the system to get the graphical interface back, cancelling the upgrade in the middle of the process and very likely breaking the system.

This happened on three different computers, with three different installs. I'm reporting from the computer where this happened first.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: systemd 249.10-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-22.22-generic 5.15.19
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-22-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu78
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Thu Mar 3 23:42:03 2022
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-06-13 (1724 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 17.04 "Zesty Zapus" - Release amd64 (20170412)
MachineType: LENOVO 80UG
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-5.15.0-22-generic root=UUID=6b4ae5c0-c78c-49a6-a1ba-029192618a7a ro quiet kvm.ignore_msrs=1 kvm.report_ignored_msrs=0 kvm.halt_poll_ns=0 kvm.halt_poll_ns_grow=0 i915.enable_gvt=1 nbd.nbds_max=2 nbd.max_part=127 mtrr_gran_size=128M mtrr_chunk_size=256M log_buf_len=128M zswap.enabled=1 zswap.zpool=z3fold usbhid.quirks=0x0079:0x0006:0x100000
SourcePackage: systemd
SystemdFailedUnits:
 Error: command ['systemctl', 'status', '--full', '●'] failed with exit code 4: Invalid unit name "●" escaped as "\xe2\x97\x8f" (maybe you should use systemd-escape?).
 Unit \xe2\x97\x8f.service could not be found.
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to jammy on 2019-12-22 (802 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 08/09/2018
dmi.bios.release: 1.45
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: 0XCN45WW
dmi.board.asset.tag: NO Asset Tag
dmi.board.name: Toronto 4A2
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: SDK0J40679 WIN
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: NO Asset Tag
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: Lenovo ideapad 310-14ISK
dmi.ec.firmware.release: 1.45
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvr0XCN45WW:bd08/09/2018:br1.45:efr1.45:svnLENOVO:pn80UG:pvrLenovoideapad310-14ISK:rvnLENOVO:rnToronto4A2:rvrSDK0J40679WIN:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrLenovoideapad310-14ISK:skuLENOVO_MT_80UG_BU_idea_FM_Lenovoideapad310-14ISK:
dmi.product.family: IDEAPAD
dmi.product.name: 80UG
dmi.product.sku: LENOVO_MT_80UG_BU_idea_FM_Lenovo ideapad 310-14ISK
dmi.product.version: Lenovo ideapad 310-14ISK
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO
modified.conffile..etc.cron.daily.apport: [deleted]

[Nick Rosbrook (enr0n)]

Please open a new bug if this is still observed on newer releases.