rc.local failing on Debian Jessie

cbeke · 05-03-2016, 06:56 AM

Hi,

I'm having issues with an rc.local file in a Debian Jessie based RootFS.

The error I get during boot (which I can read via a USB to UART cable) is the following:

Code:

[FAILED] Failed to start /etc/rc.local Compatibility.
See 'systemctl status rc-local.service' for details.

I can't login to the device, so I have no way of running systemctl status on this.

Any ideas?

Kind regards,

Chris

MensaWater · 05-03-2016, 09:28 AM

rc.local on RHEL7 (which also does Systemd like your Debian version) says:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# THIS FILE IS ADDED FOR COMPATIBILITY PURPOSES
#
# It is highly advisable to create own systemd services or udev rules
# to run scripts during boot instead of using this file.
#
# In contrast to previous versions due to parallel execution during boot
# this script will NOT be run after all other services.
#
# Please note that you must run 'chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.local' to ensure
# that this script will be executed during boot.

touch /var/lock/subsys/local

MensaWater · 05-03-2016, 09:54 AM

Looking at /usr/lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service I see it contains:

Code:

#  This file is part of systemd.
#
#  systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
#  under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
#  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or
#  (at your option) any later version.

# This unit gets pulled automatically into multi-user.target by
# systemd-rc-local-generator if /etc/rc.d/rc.local is executable.
[Unit]
Description=/etc/rc.d/rc.local Compatibility
ConditionFileIsExecutable=/etc/rc.d/rc.local
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/rc.local start
TimeoutSec=0
RemainAfterExit=yes

That along with the rc.local contents shows (On RHEL7 at least) it doesn't run rc.local unless you make it executable. I don't know if this is the same on Debian Jessie but suspect it is.

On RHEL7 rc.local is /etc/rc.d/rc.local and /etc/rc.local is a symbolic link to the one in rc.d.

cbeke · 05-03-2016, 11:04 AM

Hi MensaWater,

We're aware that you preferably want to use separate services, but we're short on time and we wanna keep it like this for now.

Bit more background:

/etc/rc.local is a custom bash script (permissions set to 755) that's triggered by the /usr/lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service script, which we altered to look like this:

Code:

[Unit]
Description=/etc/rc.local Compatibility 
ConditionFileIsExecutable=/etc/rc.local
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/etc/rc.local start
TimeoutSec=0 
RemainAfterExit=yes
SysVStartPriority=99

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

This runs fine on one of our other machines, but somehow when this is ran on boot, it doesn't work.

We get the login prompt via the UART debug line, but not via normal USB slave screen connection (beagle bone).