Comment 0 for bug 1804847

The following description is taken from:

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+question/676237

Hello everyone,
I'm running 16.04 LTS on a virtual server which, I think, uses OpenVz. After a recent reboot I found most of my services to be in a failed state. The reason for that, I guess, are these log entries:

Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/elasticsearch failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/kopano failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/kopano failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/php failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/postgresql failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/redis failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/screen failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/utmp failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/systemd/netif failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/systemd/netif/links failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/systemd/netif/leases failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/log/journal failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/log/journal/bbad3a438f4b4fb49e5d0700bd5981e8 failed: Invalid argument
Nov 17 04:47:42 h2118376 systemd-tmpfiles[165]: fchownat() of /run/log/journal/bbad3a438f4b4fb49e5d0700bd5981e8/system.journal failed: Invalid argument

To verify I tried this:

/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d# SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug systemd-tmpfiles --create elasticsearch.conf
Reading config file "elasticsearch.conf".
Running create action for entry d /var/run/elasticsearch
Found existing directory "/var/run/elasticsearch".
"/run/elasticsearch" has right mode 40755
chown "/run/elasticsearch" to 120.128
fchownat() of /run/elasticsearch failed: Invalid argument

I can manually chown the directories, e.g. "chown elasticsearch:elasticsearch /var/run/elasticsearch" and restart the service successfully. My suspicion is, this is related to an upgrade of systemd to 229-4ubuntu21.8.

At this point I don't know what to do.

I'm also confused about the version I have installed, which I thought is systemd-229. Howver, I looked at https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/v229/src/tmpfiles/tmpfiles.c and found that fchownat() is only used from version 238+:
Tag v237 (and earlier, including 229):
/.../
                        if (chown(fn,
                                  i->uid_set ? i->uid : UID_INVALID,
                                  i->gid_set ? i->gid : GID_INVALID) < 0)
                                return log_error_errno(errno, "chown(%s) failed: %m", path);
}
/.../

Tag v238

/.../
    if (fchownat(fd,
                             "",
                             i->uid_set ? i->uid : UID_INVALID,
                             i->gid_set ? i->gid : GID_INVALID,
                             AT_EMPTY_PATH) < 0)
return log_error_errno(errno, "fchownat() of %s failed: %m", path);
/.../

Any help fixing this problem would be highly appreciated.
Many thanks,
Rafael