Portmaster is not running after install

[northys]

What happened:

I've just installed portmaster (https://github.com/safing/portmaster-packaging/issues/73) and it is enabled/dead.

northys at northys-beast
» sudo systemctl status portmaster
○ portmaster.service - Portmaster by Safing
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/portmaster.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
       Docs: https://safing.io
             https://docs.safing.io
northys at northys-beast
» sudo journalctl -u portmaster --since "5 minutes ago"
-- No entries --

What did you expect to happen?:

Portmaster works.

How did you reproduce it?:

Download deb, install it on Ubuntu 22.04.

Debug Information:

[ghost]

You need to reboot your system for it to start working. Did you reboot?

[northys]

I've never had to restart my system and I've installed portmaster many times.

[northys]

Also this is just LOL. Why would I do that and how am I supposed to realize that I should do it?

I'm not BFU windows user. My system doesn't need rebooting to make stuff work.

[ghost]

I understand your view but I was just trying make the Portmaster work. Please tell me if you got it working. By the way, I am on Fedora and the cmd shows the Portmaster as active when I open it and start the core service.

[northys]

Of course I got it into working state I'm using portmaster for 2 years already :D I'm just used to post any issue that appears so safing guys know about it.

[1-bit-wonder]

I seem to be experiencing this issue as well. I can add that Portmaster systemd service unit can not even be found when checking status of the unit via systemctl on boot up, even though systemctl list-unit-files shows it as enabled:

After running systemctl enable portmaster I get the same active status output as OP above. (inactive (dead)):

Only after this can I go into the Portmaster UI and click to start core service, which does at this point get Portmaster up and running:

What did you expect to happen?: Systemd service unit being enabled should automatically start the core service on boot.

How did you reproduce it?: Installed RPM on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

[1-bit-wonder]

Did some digging and found this to be a problem with symlinking the service unit file - I was able to get it working by removing the symlink in /etc/systemd/system and just copying the file directly and then re-enabling the service like so:

# systemctl disable portmaster.service
# rm /etc/systemd/system/portmaster.service
# cp /opt/safing/portmaster/portmaster.service /etc/systemd/system/portmaster.service
# systemctl enable portmaster.service

[dhaavi]

I think how it is now is expected behavior.

We enable the service, but don't start it, as we want user to reboot to have a clean first start. Users might not expect Portmaster to become active immediately and start killing connections, possibly interrupting their work flow. It is nicer to have the user reboot in order to not interrupt any important things going on.

We previously had warnings and messages in the install process, but had to remove them because of issues. I will add a notice to the docs (https://github.com/safing/docs/pull/78) and will have a chat with @davegson on how we can improve things here.

[1-bit-wonder]

Hmm my problem may be a bit different from OP, because even on reboot the service would not start without manual intervention as seen in my comment above. Should I break this out into another issue?

[dhaavi]

Hey @higherdimensions, I also think that your issue is different, could it be that it is more similar to https://github.com/safing/portmaster/issues/673?

On this issue: I've added a note to the Linux installer downloads on the docs page: https://docs.safing.io/portmaster/install/linux

Handing this over to @davegson for further considerations.

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