You're almost there! Please answer a few more questions for access to the Applications content. Complete registration
Interested in joining? Complete your registration by providing Areas of Interest here. Register
Note!! Please register for a free account to access the full content and also to participate in Q&A in the community

Oracle Linux: systemctl shows 'Authorization not available'(DBus/Polkit/Journald recovery after OOM)

in Linux

Applies To:

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Oracle Linux 7 and later

Symptoms:

• Running 'systemctl daemon-reload' prints: Authorization not available. Check if polkit service is running or see debug message for more information.
• Some systemctl actions fail even as root; units cannot be started/reloaded.
• systemctl --failed lists core services in failed state (e.g., systemd-journald.service, systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service).
• pgrep -af dbus-daemon and pgrep -af polkitd show they are not running (or crashed).

Cause

Following a severe memory exhaustion event, core control-plane daemons (DBus, polkit, journald, tmpfiles) terminated or did not initialize cleanly. Polkit is the authorization broker that systemctl consults; when polkit and/or the system DBus are down, systemctl reports 'Authorization not available' and many service operations fail. Journald and tmpfiles can also remain in a failed state until manually restored.

Tagged:

Howdy, Stranger!

Log In

To view full details, sign in.

Register

Don't have an account? Click here to get started!