Vault Service restarting upon booting on Ubuntu Server

[Jeiman Jeya]

Hi there,

I am trying to setup the Vault service on a simple DigitalOcean droplet.

I have followed the steps here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-securely-manage-secrets-with-hashicorp-vault-on-ubuntu-16-04 while also updating the system init file with the latest configuration from HashiCorp Vault's documentation here: https://learn.hashicorp.com/vault/operations/ops-deployment-guide#step-3-configure-systemd

I then used the following to reload unit configuration.

systemctl daemon-reload

However, when I try to start the service using:

 

sudo systemctl start vault

It shows the following message:

 sudo systemctl status vault
● vault.service - "HashiCorp Vault - A tool for managing secrets"
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/vault.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2019-11-09 08:16:47 UTC; 4s ago
     Docs: https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/
  Process: 16942 ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/vault server -config=/etc/vault.hcl (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
 Main PID: 16942 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

which ultimately ends up here:

   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/vault.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2019-11-09 08:16:52 UTC; 13s ago
     Docs: https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/
  Process: 16942 ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/vault server -config=/etc/vault.hcl (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
 Main PID: 16942 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Nov 09 08:16:47 ubuntu-1gb-vault systemd[1]: vault.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Nov 09 08:16:47 ubuntu-1gb-vault systemd[1]: vault.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Nov 09 08:16:52 ubuntu-1gb-vault systemd[1]: vault.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Nov 09 08:16:52 ubuntu-1gb-vault systemd[1]: vault.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 3.
Nov 09 08:16:52 ubuntu-1gb-vault systemd[1]: Stopped "HashiCorp Vault - A tool for managing secrets".
Nov 09 08:16:52 ubuntu-1gb-vault systemd[1]: vault.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Nov 09 08:16:52 ubuntu-1gb-vault systemd[1]: vault.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Nov 09 08:16:52 ubuntu-1gb-vault systemd[1]: Failed to start "HashiCorp Vault - A tool for managing secrets".

I have followed all steps from both the Official Documentation of HashiCorp and DigitalOcean to set this up right. But for some reason, it keeps restarting and eventually not starting at all.

Kindly advise how I can fix this.

Vault Version: 1.2.3

Thank you.

 

[Vasilyev Viacheslav]

Hi,

Check application log with 'journalctl -u vault'

[Jeiman Jeya]

Hi Vasilyev,

Yes, thank you. I did Google that last night while troubleshooting the service. Turns out it was a LetsEncrypt permissions issue, where the configuration could not read the pem files.

I have since resolved it. It would be great if the development team could include this command `journalctl -u vault` in their documentation, so other engineers are aware of such commands.

Thank you.