Hi, I just reported a bug but now realized this is the same one. Please dup/close the new bug appearing any minute as you want. (copy my update here)
Default Dependencies will cause dependency loop. Here a full analysis and suggestion ... I've also got reported issues which looked like a failed to start service on boot with: Active: failed (Result: resources) A restart on the system after boot worked. The actual issue was eventually to be found as: "Read-only file system". After a while I realized we essentially hit [1]. Since [2] the service sets DefaultDependencies=no But OTOH we use "PrivateTmp=yes" which needs writable /var/tmp. The combination of the above without precaution is the issue as it may be started before all file systems are up. I propose a change to the dependencies that in all my tests worked fine with: 1. still being before cloud-init 2. the file system being ready and no more hitting the issue --- a/debian/open-vm-tools.service +++ b/debian/open-vm-tools.service @@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ Documentation=http://open-vm-tools.sourceforge.net/about.php ConditionVirtualization=vmware DefaultDependencies=no Before=cloud-init-local.service +After=local-fs.target [Service] ExecStart=/usr/bin/vmtoolsd [1]: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/2e6dbc0fcd45c152f15aed77cde4fd07957c150c/src/core/service.c#L1832 [2]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=859677 -- Christian Ehrhardt Software Engineer, Ubuntu Server Canonical Ltd
