XPost: linux.debian.maint.dpkg
Control: tag -1 unreproducible moreinfo
Hi!
On Sun, 2025-03-30 at 02:05:22 +0100, Justin Servis wrote:
Package: dpkg
Version: 1.21.22
Severity: important
X-Debbugs-Cc: jservis82@gmail.com
On multiple Debian 12 (Bookworm) systems, the dpkg-db-backup.service
unit begins running at midnight and enters a rapid restart loop. This
causes systemd (PID 1) to consume excessive CPU (often 100%) until
systemd's start-limit-hit is triggered.
I have no readily available bookworm system running systemd. But I cannot
see this behavior on one of my systems running sid with systemd.
The only difference I can see in the systemd timer between bookworm
and sid is the addition of Persistent=true. And for the dpkg-db-backup
script only a couple of commits that do not seem relevant.
The service logs show that it starts and deactivates "successfully",
but systemd appears to consider it a failure and restarts it repeatedly.
This creates rapid log entries, spawns processes, and can overwhelm lightweight systems (e.g., virtual machines).
Could you parse those log entries?
Steps to reproduce:
1. Let a Debian 12 system idle until midnight with the default timer
enabled
2. Observe CPU usage via `top` or `htop` (systemd will be at or near 100%)
3. Check `journalctl -u dpkg-db-backup.service` for repeated start/fail
cycles
Workaround:
Disabling the timer and masking the service resolves the issue:
'sudo systemctl disable --now dpkg-db-backup.timer sudo systemctl mask dpkg-db-backup.service'
This behavior affects both virtual and physical Debian 12 machines that
have not been modified beyond using Docker and standard updates. Please investigate whether the unit file needs an adjusted Restart= policy or
if the script exits too quickly to be considered successful.
The only thing I can think of is that the script itself is failing for
some reason. Do you see any error output in some of the log files?
Perhaps add «set -x» to the dpkg-db-backup script to see what's going
on?
Are backups created at all under /var/backups/? Do you have any
package performing any automatic package management actions at the
same time at midnight?
Thanks,
Guillem
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)