Systemd: no error but "maintenance mode"

From	Steffen Dettmer <steffen.dettmer@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.user
Subject	Systemd: no error but "maintenance mode"
Date	2017-01-08 14:50 +0100
Message-ID	<sXm1b-72I-5@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
Organization	linux.* mail to news gateway

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Hi,

What happened before:
I had issue with a Debian server SATA bus [1]. I noticed because
apt-get upgrade hung, because initramfs updater calls "sync" which
hang because of [1]. All operations accessing a certain (backup) disk
blocked. Shutdown over network. It was reported server power LED still
up, so probably shutdown hang, too. Server was powered off and disk
pulled.

Then server did not come up. Now I went to its location with monitor
and keyboard. I saw a screen full of boot messages, each line prefixed
with green "[OK]". On bottom, I got asked for root password. I though
Debian does not use root passwords? I'm old fashioned so fortunately I
set one, so I could log in.

I noticed /var/log/syslog had not been updated recently. Obviously
logging is not running / working. All file systems are correctly
mounted read-write.

What happens? Why is however dropping me only a shell when everything
from booting worked fine?
What is this for a bad idea to spawn a LOCAL shell on a server? Or is
Debian nowadays desktop only? I know ubuntu-server, is there also some
debian-server?

Any hint appreciated.

Steffen



[1]
task kworker/u8:0:27432 blocked for more than 120 seconds
Workqueue: writeback bdi_writeback_workfn (flush-8:48)
[<ffffffff81510d09>] ? io_schedule+0x99/0x120
...

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Thread

Systemd: no error but "maintenance mode" Steffen Dettmer <steffen.dettmer@gmail.com> - 2017-01-08 14:50 +0100
  Re: Systemd: no error but "maintenance mode" Joe <joe@jretrading.com> - 2017-01-08 20:00 +0100
  Re: Systemd: no error but "maintenance mode" Joe <joe@jretrading.com> - 2017-01-08 20:10 +0100
    Re: Systemd: no error but "maintenance mode" Steffen Dettmer <steffen.dettmer@gmail.com> - 2017-01-10 20:30 +0100
      Re: Systemd: no error but "maintenance mode" Michael Biebl <email@michaelbiebl.de> - 2017-01-10 21:30 +0100
      Re: Systemd: no error but "maintenance mode" Joe <joe@jretrading.com> - 2017-01-10 21:40 +0100
      Re: Systemd: no error but "maintenance mode" David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2017-01-10 21:50 +0100
        Re: Systemd: no error but "maintenance mode" Joe <joe@jretrading.com> - 2017-01-10 22:50 +0100

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