Hi Holger, today I upgraded my ejabberd installation from Bookworm to Trixie and I think I ran into the same problem. From journalctl:
Sep 10 07:31:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:31:13.723030+02:00 [info]
Loading configuration from /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.yml
Sep 10 07:31:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:31:13.843328+02:00 [warning]
Module mod_mam is recommended for module mod_muc but is not found in the config
Sep 10 07:31:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:31:13.965803+02:00 [info]
Configuration loaded successfully
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd systemd[1]: ejabberd.service: start operation timed
out. Terminating.
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:36:13.609211+02:00 [notice]
SIGTERM received - shutting down
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:36:13.609490+02:00 [error]
External eimp process (pid=5487) has terminated unexpectedly, restarting in a
few seconds
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:36:13.609701+02:00 [error]
External eimp process (pid=5488) has terminated unexpectedly, restarting in a
few seconds
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:36:13.609876+02:00 [error]
External eimp process (pid=5493) has terminated unexpectedly, restarting in a
few seconds
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:36:13.609804+02:00 [error]
External eimp process (pid=5489) has terminated unexpectedly, restarting in a
few seconds
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:36:13.609922+02:00 [notice]
SIGTERM received - shutting down
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:36:13.609854+02:00 [error]
External eimp process (pid=5491) has terminated unexpectedly, restarting in a
few seconds
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:36:13.609863+02:00 [error]
External eimp process (pid=5492) has terminated unexpectedly, restarting in a
few seconds
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:36:13.609948+02:00 [error]
External eimp process (pid=5494) has terminated unexpectedly, restarting in a
few seconds
Sep 10 07:36:13 02ejabberd sh[5446]: 2025-09-10 07:36:13.609802+02:00 [error]
External eimp process (pid=5490) has terminated unexpectedly, restarting in a
few seconds
Sep 10 07:36:14 02ejabberd sh[5446]:
{exit,{shutdown,{gen_server,call,[application_controller,{start_application,ejabberd,temporary},infinity]}},[{gen_server,call,3,[{file,"gen_server.erl"},{line,1222}]},{application_controller,call,2,[{file,"application_controller.erl"},{line,509}]},{application,enqueue_or_start_app,6,[{file,"application.erl"},{line,419}]},{application,enqueue_or_start,6,[{file,"application.erl"},{line,384}]},{application,ensure_all_started,3,[{file,"application.erl"},{line,359}]},{ejabberd,start,0,[{file,"ejabberd.erl"},{line,54}]},{init,start_it,1,[]},{init,start_em,1,[]}]}
Sep 10 07:36:15 02ejabberd systemd[1]: ejabberd.service: Failed with result
'timeout'.
All the file beam.smp is running at 100% CPU:
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2399141 200102 20 0 6129212 2.7g 40256 S 111.6 8.6 4:09.78 beam.smp
I also started out with a very large archive_msg.DAT:
$ root@02ejabberd:~# ls -lha --sort=size /var/lib/ejabberd
total 1.5G
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 900M Sep 10 07:23 archive_msg.DAT
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 358M Sep 10 00:27
MnesiaCore.ejabberd@02ejabberd_1757_456828_906542
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 358M Sep 10 00:22 PREVIOUS.LOG
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 1.2M Sep 10 00:07 translations.cache
-rw-r----- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 713K Feb 11 2017 filename.txt
-rw-r----- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 508K Sep 10 00:22 caps_features.DAT
-rw-r----- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 428K Feb 16 2025 vcard.DAT
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 415K Sep 10 00:22 offline_msg.DAT
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 282K Nov 7 2024
MnesiaCore.ejabberd@02ejabberd_1731_13964_107817
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 282K Nov 7 2024
MnesiaCore.ejabberd@02ejabberd_1731_13510_476279
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 281K Nov 7 2024
MnesiaCore.ejabberd@02ejabberd_1731_13167_358081
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 281K Nov 7 2024
MnesiaCore.ejabberd@02ejabberd_1731_13097_172341
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 281K Nov 7 2024
MnesiaCore.ejabberd@02ejabberd_1731_12643_848046
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 281K Nov 7 2024
MnesiaCore.ejabberd@02ejabberd_1731_12189_804828
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 281K Nov 7 2024
MnesiaCore.ejabberd@02ejabberd_1731_11735_463660
-rw-r--r-- 1 ejabberd ejabberd 281K Sep 10 00:22 pubsub_item.DAT
As advised, I removed (backed up) /var/lib/ejabberd/archive_msg* and
/var/lib/ejabberd/pubsub* but ejabberd still fails to start within 5 minutes
(the default timeout) with the journalctl log from above.
I don't mind loosing a bit more data (only the user database is really
important I think) and am looking for advice on how to get this service to
start after my upgrade to Trixie. If this is a different bug (I'm filing it
here because my archive_msg.DAT was large) then I'll open another issue. But at
this point I would appreciate more advice from you.
I now manually increased the timeout for ejabberd to start from 5 minutes to 2
hours and maybe this will fix itself, given a few more CPU cycles to spare?
> 2) Convert to SQL before upgrading (strongly recommended).
>
> I could help with either (e.g., in the ejabberd support channel), but
> maybe that's out of scope here?
Once everything runs I'd greatly appreciate advice on how to convert my
installation to sqlite. I have a very small instance with only a handful of
users and thus thought that using mnesia would be fine. Looking at the database
sizes, maybe not the case. If you could point me to the guide on how to do the
conversion, I'd greatly appreciate it. I was not successful finding such
instruction in the web (with google and bing/duckduckgo).
Thanks!
cheers, josch
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