Comment 2 for bug 1811580

This problem is not new and it appears again with the new systemd "229-4ubuntu21.15" released.

See also these bug reports which somehow relate to the issue:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1804847
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1804603

As I'm no Linux pro I can't tell how these issues relate to each other but they definitely do. I don't quite understand why this issue was strictly focused on OpenVZ and then neglected because it definitely is not only OpenVZ related.

I didn't face the issue in systemd versions <systemd-229-4ubuntu21.9 with systemd-229-4ubuntu21.10 the problem was fixed again via a regression and now it's back again in 229-4ubuntu21.15. I'm on:

Linux xxx 3.4.113-sun8i #2 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jan 12 15:54:26 CET 2019 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS
Release: 16.04
Codename: xenial

Armbian and I suspect this has nothing to do with OpenVZ. See more here in the following link concerning Armbian based distributions with the same issue https://forum.armbian.com/topic/8852-ssh-doesnt-work-on-orange-pi-zero/

Moreover it doesn't only affect SSH but rather many other services because from what I understand some directories aren't created on startup, because of some system-tmpfiles changes. Here is the output of journalctl -b 0 -u systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service

Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd[1]: Starting Create Volatile Files and Directories...
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: [/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/var.conf:14] Duplicate line for path "/var/log", ignoring.
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /var: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /var/log: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /var/lib: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /run/sendsigs.omit.d: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /home: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /srv: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /run/lock/subsys: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /var/run/lighttpd: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /var/cache: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /var/cache/man: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd-tmpfiles[581]: Failed to validate path /run/openvpn: Bad file descriptor
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd[1]: systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd[1]: Failed to start Create Volatile Files and Directories.
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd[1]: systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jän 14 11:01:51 xxx systemd[1]: systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

In my case the following service won't start because of the systemd update. I'm no facing the exact same issue / behaviour like in systemd-229-4ubuntu21.9. Same service are affected, same errors.

# dnsmasq.service loaded failed failed dnsmasq - A lightweight DHCP and caching DNS server
# lighttpd.service loaded failed failed Lighttpd Daemon
# <email address hidden> loaded failed failed OpenVPN connection to server
# ssh.service loaded failed failed OpenBSD Secure Shell server
# systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service loaded failed failed Create Static Device Nodes in /dev
# systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service loaded failed failed Create Volatile Files and Directories

I can't tell why this happens and this is everything on information I can provide. I would also provide you more info if you tell me what you need. I can rollback to a version <21.9 or >21.9 and <21.15 and everything will work again. But TBH I don't want to mark systemd on hold for too long. Maybe some sort of temporary fix other then rolling back would be fantastic...