[SOLVED] Failed to start User Manager for UID 116 (ejabberd)

Support
1

I have the following in Cockpit on 12 September (I guess it is reverse chronological order):

02:00 Failed to start User Manager for UID 116. systemd
02:00 user@116.service: Failed at step PAM spawning /lib/systemd/systemd: Operation not permitted systemd
02:00 user@116.service: Failed to set up PAM session: Operation not permitted systemd
02:00 PAM failed: Permission denied systemd
02:00 pam_access(systemd-user:account): access denied for user `ejabberd' from `systemd-user'
systemd
02:00 pam_env(su:session): Unable to open env file: /etc/default/locale: No such file or directory su
02:00 Failed to start User Manager for UID 116. systemd
02:00 user@116.service: Failed at step PAM spawning /lib/systemd/systemd: Operation not permitted systemd
02:00 user@116.service: Failed to set up PAM session: Operation not permitted systemd
02:00 PAM failed: Permission denied

It may be a coincidence but I lost access to my freedombox on that day (I could not find anything suspicious in the logs, other than that).

I could only restart the freedombox today as I was away (I removed the power, took the SD card on another computer, ran fsck on the ext2 and btrfs file systems and put it back and put power again, it seems to work fine, except that tor was taking 100% of the CPU so I deactivated it).

The same sequence occurred on 26 August but I did not lose access to the freedombox.

Is that issue potentially serious? Can it have any relationship with losing access to the freedombox?

2

I have the same thing again today.

I hope I don’t loose control of the freedombox again tonight.

EDIT: I’d suggest having warnings of failures to start services on the main plinth page, otherwise one needs to go to cockpit and/or journal every day.

3

To fix the above error try disabling the “Restrict console logins” option in security app.

4

Thanks for the suggestion.

I did that and rebooted, no more error of services not started (previously, I always had 2 failed services, calibre and wordpress, that I never installed).

5

These harmless failures were fixed in a recent release.