Debugging a proxmox LXC container that will not start

Sometime after making changes in your LXC configuration file in /etc/pve/lxc your LXC container may have problem starting. You will get a message like this:

Job for pve-container@165.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status pve-container@165.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
command 'systemctl start pve-container@165' failed: exit code 1

Then it recommends to get status of the start by typing...

systemctl status pve-container@165.service

And its output is...

● pve-container@165.service - PVE LXC Container: 165
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/pve-container@.service; static; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2019-05-21 08:13:01 CDT; 10s ago
     Docs: man:lxc-start
           man:lxc
           man:pct
  Process: 3560220 ExecStart=/usr/bin/lxc-start -n 165 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

May 21 08:12:59 e2 systemd[1]: Starting PVE LXC Container: 165...
May 21 08:13:01 e2 lxc-start[3560220]: lxc-start: 165: lxccontainer.c: wait_on_daemonized_start: 865 Received container state "ABORTING" instead of "RUNNING"
May 21 08:13:01 e2 lxc-start[3560220]: lxc-start: 165: tools/lxc_start.c: main: 330 The container failed to start
May 21 08:13:01 e2 lxc-start[3560220]: lxc-start: 165: tools/lxc_start.c: main: 333 To get more details, run the container in foreground mode
May 21 08:13:01 e2 lxc-start[3560220]: lxc-start: 165: tools/lxc_start.c: main: 336 Additional information can be obtained by setting the --logfile and --logpriority options
May 21 08:13:01 e2 systemd[1]: pve-container@165.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=1
May 21 08:13:01 e2 systemd[1]: pve-container@165.service: Killing process 3560226 (3) with signal SIGKILL.
May 21 08:13:01 e2 systemd[1]: Failed to start PVE LXC Container: 165.
May 21 08:13:01 e2 systemd[1]: pve-container@165.service: Unit entered failed state.

May 21 08:13:01 e2 systemd[1]: pve-container@165.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.


As you can see the output still does not tell me enough information.

So I recommend using the following command to start LXC with debug and output log to temporary file:


lxc-start --logfile /tmp/lxc-start.log -n [CTID]

if the debug or log above is still not enough, the next command below will provide an EXTREMELY detailed log:

strace -f lxc-start -l trace -o /tmp/trace.log -n [CTID]