autopkgtest boot-and-services fails on many architectures very often since systemd/239-7ubuntu12

Reproducing the bug:
- of course it had to work reliably on a local amd64
- ppc based autopkgtest has the usual non-fun of bug 1630909 still failing me

But when checking the logs that we have we see:
- service user@118.service is the one failing
- might that be related to GDB issues we had in the past?

Log:
pam_unix(systemd-user:session): session opened for user gdm by (uid=0)
Failed to fully start up daemon: Permission denied
user@118.service: Failed with result 'protocol'.

It seems to me that this:
+ * boot-and-services: skip gdm test, when gdm-x-session fails.
+ Across all architectures, gdm fails to come up reliably since cosmic.
+ (LP: #1790478)

Needs to be extended for ppc64

I wonder what you'd think about either:

#1
--- a/debian/tests/boot-and-services
+++ b/debian/tests/boot-and-services
@@ -62,6 +62,7 @@ class ServicesTest(unittest.TestCase):
             self.assertEqual(failed, [])

     @unittest.skipUnless(subprocess.call(['which', 'gdm3'], stdout=subprocess.DEVNULL) == 0, 'gdm3 not found')
+ @unittest.skipUnless(subprocess.call(['ps', 'u', '-C', 'gdm-x-session'], stdout=subprocess.DEVNULL) == 0, 'gdm-x-session failed to start')
     def test_gdm3(self):
         out = subprocess.check_output(['ps', 'u', '-C', 'gdm-x-session'])
         self.assertIn(b'gdm-x-session gnome-session', out)

or

#2
--- a/debian/tests/boot-and-services
+++ b/debian/tests/boot-and-services
@@ -51,6 +51,8 @@ class ServicesTest(unittest.TestCase):
         failed = [f for f in failed if 'thermald' not in f]
         # console-setup.service fails on devices without keyboard (LP: #1516591)
         failed = [f for f in failed if 'console-setup' not in f]
+ # gdm lets user 118 fail (LP: #1805358)
+ failed = [f for f in failed if 'user@118.service' not in f]
         # cpi.service fails on s390x
         failed = [f for f in failed if 'cpi.service' not in f]
         if failed:

@xnox - would you have any preference between #1, #2 or neither of the above?

FYI - there is a chance that it works - by chance one of my retries now worked.
But given the low percentage I still think we should fix it to some way ignore that error.

Since it most reliably fails on LP infra and almost never locally I tried to verify it in [1][2]
But this becomes a can of worms hitting [3] now.

Whenever you do the next merge/fix you'll need to fix that anyway; Also on that next upload that will follow sooner or later you will have to pass the tests - so I'll avoid duplication of work.

Instead I attach the current patch that I have here for your consideration, since it only ignores one service fail it should be rather safe - worst case it doesn't fix the issue, but it should hopefully not cause extra breakage.

Leaving it to you, let me know if I can help anything

[1]: https://bileto.ubuntu.com/#/ticket/3541
[2]: https://bileto.ubuntu.com/#/ticket/3542
[3]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=909455

This bug was fixed in the package systemd - 239-7ubuntu14

---------------
systemd (239-7ubuntu14) disco; urgency=medium

  * Fix compat with new meson.
    File: debian/patches/meson-rename-Ddebug-to-Ddebug-extra.patch
    https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/+source/systemd/commit/?id=3b764ec1b76768a8c40635019fa5a8acb81b223e

 -- Dimitri John Ledkov <email address hidden> Thu, 29 Nov 2018 16:53:00 +0000

Thanks!

Hello Christian, or anyone else affected,

Accepted systemd into cosmic-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/239-7ubuntu10.5 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-cosmic to verification-done-cosmic. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-cosmic. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

boot-and-services passed on all arches in cosmic autopkgtests.