Subject: bug#72166: Shepherd periodically goes unresponsive on one of my machines

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2024 09:14:29 +0200

Hi,

"Jonathan Frederickson" <[email-masked]> skribis:

> Hi Ludo, thanks for the troubleshooting help. Looks like I'm running 0.10.4:
>
> jfred@terracard ~$ cat /proc/1/cmdline | xargs -0
> /gnu/store/bhynhk0c6ssq3fqqc59fvhxjzwywsjbb-guile-3.0.9/bin/guile --no-auto-compile /gnu/store/39li5qpiaj1lx89xgahlbgvfnjhpcpwg-shepherd-0.10.4/bin/shepherd --config /gnu/store/hfyri6ygfdjq4w3nkha2ypa2k98hhfxj-shepherd.conf
>
> I see now that 0.10.5 was released a few weeks ago, does that have a fix that could be related?

Yes, it could be related.  Per the ‘NEWS’ file of Shepherd:

  ** ‘herd unload root SERVICE’ no longer hands when there’s a replacement
     (<https://issues.guix.gnu.org/71478>)

  It used to be that, for a running service S that has a replacement registered,
  ‘herd unload root S’ would hang shepherd, making it totally unresponsive—‘herd
  status’, ‘halt’, etc. would hang forever, and inetd-style services would no
  longer start, etc.  This is now fixed.

Depending on previous ‘guix system reconfigure’ invocations on these
machines, it’s possible that you ended up in this state.

Would be great if you could upgrade and see if the problem still occurs.

Thanks,
Ludo’.