systemd-pull missing

[Lennart Jern]

I am testing systemd-sysupdate on a ubuntu 24.04 server VM. Systemd-sysupdate tries to call systemd-pull for downloading files (that it will then use to do updates). However, the binary for systemd-pull is completely missing as seen in this strace output:

execve("/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-pull", ["systemd-pull", "raw", "--direct", "--verify", "no", "http://127.0.0.1:9000/SHA256SUMS", "-"], 0x7ffd00d13b20 /* 23 vars */) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 24.04
Package: systemd 255.4-1ubuntu8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.8.0-31.31-generic 6.8.1
Uname: Linux 6.8.0-31-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.28.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
Date: Thu May 30 11:32:33 2024
InstallationDate: Installed on 2024-05-30 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 24.04 LTS "Noble Numbat" - Release amd64 (20240423)
Lsusb:
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
 Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0627:0001 Adomax Technology Co., Ltd QEMU Tablet
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Lsusb-t:
 /: Bus 001.Port 001: Dev 001, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/15p, 480M
     |__ Port 001: Dev 002, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 480M
 /: Bus 002.Port 001: Dev 001, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/15p, 5000M
MachineType: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009)
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-6.8.0-31-generic root=/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv ro
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: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 04/01/2014
dmi.bios.release: 0.0
dmi.bios.vendor: SeaBIOS
dmi.bios.version: 1.15.0-1
dmi.chassis.type: 1
dmi.chassis.vendor: QEMU
dmi.chassis.version: pc-q35-6.2
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnSeaBIOS:bvr1.15.0-1:bd04/01/2014:br0.0:svnQEMU:pnStandardPC(Q35+ICH9,2009):pvrpc-q35-6.2:cvnQEMU:ct1:cvrpc-q35-6.2:sku:
dmi.product.name: Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009)
dmi.product.version: pc-q35-6.2
dmi.sys.vendor: QEMU

[Nick Rosbrook (enr0n)]

systemd-pull is provided by the systemd-container package. Please install systemd-container and try again.

[Lennart Jern (lennart-jern)]

Thank you, that did it indeed!
I would still claim this is a dependency bug though. How come I can have systemd-sysupdate installed without systemd-container? I had to use strace to figure out what the issue was. Without that I just got cryptic messages like:

$ /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-sysupdate
Discovering installed instances…
Discovering available instances…
⤵️ Acquiring manifest file https://github.com/flatcar/sysext-bakery/releases/download/latest/SHA256SUMS…
(sd-pull) failed with exit status 1.

[Nick Rosbrook (enr0n)]

systemd specifies a Suggests: systemd-container. This is because it is not a hard dependency, but instead something you might want (systemd-sysupdate is a pretty new tool that by default does not have a lot of use on Ubuntu). You can install all such packages with apt install --install-suggests systemd.