/run/user/uid missing when using `incus exec container -- sudo --user uname --login`

Incus
1

Hello,

If I use incus console container then login the folder is there…

But if I use incus exec container -- sudo --user uname --login the folder /run/user/1000doesn’t exist.

I tried to see if any of the --user services are running using:
systemctl --user list-units state=active
but it produced an error
Failed to connect to user scope bus via local transport: $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS and $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not defined (consider using --machine=<user>@.host --user to connect to bus of other user)
And indeed both environment variables are empty.
If I manually export the dbus session using
export $(dbus-launch)
And run the list-unit command again, then systemd exists with error code 1. Below is the related journalctl log

Jun 30 18:31:46 test-x-container dbus-daemon[1533]: [session uid=1000 pid=1531 pidfd=5] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.systemd1' requested by ':1.0' (uid=1000 pid=1536 comm="systemctl --user list-units state=active")
Jun 30 18:31:46 test-x-container dbus-daemon[1533]: [session uid=1000 pid=1531 pidfd=5] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1' failed: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1

For now I just use the console mode but I’d like to hear how to troubleshoot this issue…I’ve probably done something wrong…

Thanks in advance!

2

It’s basically a matter of whether the full stack including integration with logind kicks in or not.

You could probably do incus exec container -- login and go through that login sequence which would then work the same as with incus console.

May be worth also trying su -l NAME to see if that kicks the right part of PAM.

3

Thank you for the quick response.

As you had suspected incus exec container -- login works

But if I enter with exec then try su -l UNAME the folder are still missing…

I don’t know anything about PAM, I’ve put it on my to-do list :slight_smile:

But I was wondering, is this expected behavior or maybe something about my container. I used incus launch images:archlinux/current/amd64 test-x-container to build the container.

I can also try with another linux-distro to test…

Stephane thanks for all the hard-work…your youtube tutorials have saved me on several occations!

5

It’s generally expected that incus exec BLAH bash will not hit the PAM stack. incus shell BLAH may hit the PAM stack though that may depend between distros.

Look in /etc/pam.d, there typically are su and su-l specific profiles for those commands. Though I’m mostly familiar with the Debian/Ubuntu behavior, different distros may have different configs there.