#1130780 systemd: ImportCredential lines in the config cause services to fail

Package:
systemd
Source:
systemd
Description:
system and service manager
Submitter:
Martin Furter
Date:
2026-03-15 12:21:03 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#1130780#5
Date:
2026-03-15 05:39:49 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

the problems started when i tried to do a dist-upgrade.

I was running kernel 4.19.0-5 because in later ones pm-suspend did not work
anymore.

The last few lines of output of dist-upgrade looked like this:

Setting up systemd (260~rc2-1) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/journald.conf ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/logind.conf ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/networkd.conf ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/sleep.conf ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/system.conf ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/systemd/user.conf ...
Cannot open '/etc/machine-id': Protocol driver not attached
dpkg: error processing package systemd (--configure):
 installed systemd package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 systemd
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

systemd-machine-id-setup seems to have caused that error message.

Since kernel 5.9.11-1 has been installed i booted with that kernel and tried
to finish the upgrade. Unfortunately there were problems starting journald
and some other services and it dropped me into the emergency and repair mode.

At least installing the systemd package did not give that error message
anymore. Does it depend on the kernel version running?


Running apt in emergency mode was not really possible. Systemd kept trashing
the terminal and logging me out. So i started apt in a screen session to keep
it from beeing interrupted. That way I was able to finish the upgrade.

But after that a number of services were failing. Jounald kept complaining
about credentials that it does not know. To get the system running again i
had to comment out all ImportCredential lines in the following files in
/usr/lib/systemd/system:
 - getty@.service
 - procps.service
 - systemd-fsck@.service
 - systemd-journald.service
 - systemd-sysctl.service
 - systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev-early.service
 - systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
 - systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
 - systemd-udev-load-credentials.service

Unfortunately journald and systemd did not tell me what the credential was
that caused troubles and where it came from.

Best regards,
Martin

#1130780#10
Date:
2026-03-15 12:20:37 UTC
From:
To:
Control: tags -1 moreinfo

Why is machine-id missing on this machine? Sounds like something is
wrong with the setup. machine-id must exist, otherwise the
installation is broken. Please check what's up with that, fix it, and
try again.