Degraded systems (all of mine, yours too (probably))
For reasons unknown, I ran the following on a machine today:
# systemctl is-system-running degraded
Uh-oh. *All* my machines were like this. Some due to, i.e., `certbot` failing to renew a cert for an expired domain. To find out what's going on, I ran: # systemctl list-units --state failed UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION ● cantonese-milter.service loaded failed failed Rewrite Cantonese Word-of-the-Day LOAD = Reflects whether the unit definition was properly loaded. ACTIVE = The high-level unit activation state, i.e. generalization of SUB. SUB = The low-level unit activation state, values depend on unit type. 1 loaded units listed. I was then able to fix the failed unit(s) and now: # systemctl is-system-running running Curious, am I really sloppy, or is it common to have a failed unit on machines? What are your results?
~$ systemctl is-system-running running Mine is running, but I know not where? On Thu, 26 Feb 2026 at 16:24, Ron via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
For reasons unknown, I ran the following on a machine today:
# systemctl is-system-running degraded
Uh-oh. *All* my machines were like this. Some due to, i.e., `certbot` failing to renew a cert for an expired domain.
To find out what's going on, I ran:
# systemctl list-units --state failed UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION ● cantonese-milter.service loaded failed failed Rewrite Cantonese Word-of-the-Day
LOAD = Reflects whether the unit definition was properly loaded. ACTIVE = The high-level unit activation state, i.e. generalization of SUB. SUB = The low-level unit activation state, values depend on unit type.
1 loaded units listed.
I was then able to fix the failed unit(s) and now:
# systemctl is-system-running running
Curious, am I really sloppy, or is it common to have a failed unit on machines? What are your results?
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On Thu, 26 Feb 2026 at 16:24, Ron via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
For reasons unknown, I ran the following on a machine today:
# systemctl is-system-running degraded
Uh-oh. *All* my machines were like this. Some due to, i.e., `certbot` failing to renew a cert for an expired domain.
To find out what's going on, I ran:
# systemctl list-units --state failed UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION ● cantonese-milter.service loaded failed failed Rewrite Cantonese Word-of-the-Day
LOAD = Reflects whether the unit definition was properly loaded. ACTIVE = The high-level unit activation state, i.e. generalization of SUB. SUB = The low-level unit activation state, values depend on unit type.
1 loaded units listed.
I was then able to fix the failed unit(s) and now:
# systemctl is-system-running running
Curious, am I really sloppy, or is it common to have a failed unit on machines? What are your results?
I tried this on a desktop machine ("running") and a local Raspberry Pi server ("running"). And then I tried one of my cloud servers: "degraded." It showed two services as having problems. One - like you - was certbot. But as I know all the domains I care about still have valid certs, my guess is it's because this system used to serve a website for a domain I let lapse, and I've made no attempt to clean that up (and really don't care). The other broken service is "fail2ban" which I've installed for years via Ansible, but clearly haven't paid enough attention to ... But I find the Internet-facing vs. local machines split kind of interesting for me. Don't know if it'll hold up on closer examination. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com
participants (3)
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Don Tai -
Giles Orr -
Ron