upstart

upstart job fails to start with "limit nofile unlimited unlimited"

Bug #1420640 reported by Nobuto Murata on 2015-02-11

This bug affects 2 people

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	upstart	New	Undecided	Unassigned
	upstart (Ubuntu)	Confirmed	Undecided	Unassigned

Bug Description

Upstart cookbook refers to "limit nofile unlimited unlimited".
http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#limit

However it fails to start jobs, for example:

$ sudo stop cron
$ echo limit nofile unlimited unlimited | sudo tee /etc/init/cron.override
$ sudo start cron
start: Job failed to start

Feb 11 16:02:52 lifebook kernel: [36027.452599] init: Failed to spawn cron main process: unable to set "nofile" resource limit: Operation not permitted

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: upstart 1.13.2-0ubuntu7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.18.0-13.14-generic 3.18.5
Uname: Linux 3.18.0-13-generic x86_64
.etc.init.cron.override: limit nofile unlimited unlimited
ApportVersion: 2.16.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Wed Feb 11 16:03:27 2015
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-02-09 (1 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Alpha amd64 (20150207)
ProcKernelCmdline: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.18.0-13-generic.efi.signed root=/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: upstart
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UpstartBugCategory: System
UpstartRunningSessionVersion: upstart 1.13.2
UpstartRunningSystemVersion: init (upstart 1.13.2)
modified.conffile..etc.at.deny: [inaccessible: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/etc/at.deny']
modified.conffile..etc.libvirt.qemu.conf: [inaccessible: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/etc/libvirt/qemu.conf']
modified.conffile..etc.libvirt.qemu.networks.default.xml: [inaccessible: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/etc/libvirt/qemu/networks/default.xml']

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Revision history for this message

Nobuto Murata (nobuto) wrote on 2015-02-11:

BootLog.txt Edit (877 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
Dependencies.txt Edit (3.5 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
ProcEnviron.txt Edit (346 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
UpstartRunningSessionJobs.txt Edit (1.5 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
UpstartRunningSystemJobs.txt Edit (4.6 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")

Revision history for this message

Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote on 2015-11-12:

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in upstart (Ubuntu):
status:	New → Confirmed

Revision history for this message

Jose Gonzalez (savant) wrote on 2016-09-21:

I'm also seeing this on multiple Ubuntu 14.04 servers, but in regards to the docker-engine upstart file. It's unclear to me why this is the case, as a similarly configured server does not have this issue.

Revision history for this message

Jose Gonzalez (savant) wrote on 2016-09-21:

I figured out our problem. We lowered `fs.nr_open` on the non-working systems from the - apparent default - of `1048576` to `655360`. The docker package set a limit higher than our new limit, so the process was failing to start.

Upstart is going away - boo - but in case anyone sees this issue in the future, running the following was the fix for me:

```
sysctl -w fs.nr_open=1048576
```