Can't start frr.service about kathara

[lorenzo93]

Hello @BuonHobo,

We're familiar with the issue you mentioned, as it has been addressed here.
Notably, that issue refers to the older /etc/init.d method to initiate services.
Since Kathará now utilizes systemctl, could you verify if the proposed solution is effective in your situation? Simply prepend su before running the service, like this: su systemctl start frr.

[BuonHobo]

Thank you for your help.

Running su systemctl start frr gave this output:

root@r3:/# su systemctl start frr
su: user systemctl does not exist or the user entry does not contain all the required fields

But this command seems to work as expected:

root@r5:/# su -c "systemctl start frr"
root@r5:/# systemctl status frr
frr.service - FRRouting
    Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/frr.service, enabled)
    Active: active (running)

Thank you again for your support!
Is there anything I can do to help you find a solution?

[lorenzo93]

We already tried to find a solution without any luck.
If you find the real cause of this issue we would be happy to fix it.
In the meantime, I'll write your solution even under the original issue so that if someone have the same problem he could learn the workaround.
We'll keep this issue open until the problem will be fixed.

Thanks for the support :)

[BuonHobo]

I tried digging around but I haven't found a reason why this happens.

However, there's a simple way to include the workaround in kathara so that users don't have to know about it and can follow the lectures without issues.

It's pretty simple, it only requires adding a file named /etc/systemd/system/frr.service.d/workaround.conf in the kathara image. I tested the fix by adding this file inside each machine in the lab folder.

This is the file's content:

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStop=
ExecReload=
ExecStart=/usr/bin/su -c "/usr/lib/frr/frrinit.sh start"
ExecStop=/usr/bin/su -c "/usr/lib/frr/frrinit.sh stop"
ExecReload=/usr/bin/su -c "/usr/lib/frr/frrinit.sh reload"

This will override the default frr systemd unit so that it wraps the command with su. This solution is still a workaround, but it is easy to revert and it makes my machine work as intended.

[tcaiazzi]

Hi @BuonHobo,

Many thanks for the help! We really appreciate it, and we will include your workaround in the next release of the kathara/frr image.

I'm closing this issue, since I opened a new one (KatharaFramework/Docker-Images#10) in the Docker images repository. We can continue the discussion there.

Many thanks for the help and support 🚀