I was discussing with Ryan about it and as expected just adding "After=dbus.service" to open-vm-tools.service will for sure trigger random behavior. This is will create a unresolvable dependency because: - dbus has DefaultDependencies which makes it after sysinit.target - Cloud-init-local needs to be early to make changes required before certain targets start e.g. Before=sysinit.target - But open-vm-tools is before cloud-init-local That is a conflicting requirement and systemd will kick one out of the loop at best.
We would be interested if you could share how to set up VMware to make use of that hostnamectl so that we can see and debug the case on our own as well. And furthermore the interactions with cloud-init. Worth a try might be to try making open-vm-tools "After=dbus.socket" which would provide the socket that hostnamectl needs but NOT needing it to fully complete. If it does not work let us know and we can give up that approach. If it works for your current needs we still need to ensure it does not inherit the dependencies, after a boot with that modification please check the journal if you can find any message like: "Breaking ordering cycle by deleting" Example from another case "Job systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service/start deleted to break ordering cycle starting with var-lib-mysql.mount/start" In general it seems vmtoolsd is doing many things. It provides services e.g. through vmware-rpctool which some tools need to use early (so it needs to be early) And it tries to do configuration e.g. hostnamectl which needs to be late. Cloud init was split into stages for the same reason and it appears that the current issue vmtoolsd being torn apart having to be early & late at the same time is due to similar issues. You might consider (surely a longer effort) to split things up as well to provide early services early and later functions late without those conflicts. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1793715 Title: VMWare Guest OS Customization will fail for Ubuntu 18.04 Server LiveCD To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cloud-init/+bug/1793715/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
