[tor-relays] Tor not starting but log inconclusive

[Roger Dingledine]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 11:39:50AM +0100, yl wrote:
> Hello all,
> I have a problem with a Tor Exit.
> 
> Tor will not start correctly, but there is nothing in the logs. Here is the
> info I got.

Is this the debian package? What OS?

> You can see the start was at 04:28:59 but it only started when I did
> "systemctl restart tor" at 10:12:01.103.

My first thought is that somehow during boot Tor fails to start. For
example, if at that point in the boot process there is no network,
maybe Tor aborts even before it gets to the point of writing anything
in its logs. We've definitely had bugs like that over the years.

> Any idea how to troubleshoot this and what to look for?

Tor will write to stdout before it switches over to writing to the
logs. So whatever init process is starting Tor can see that output. How
exactly to get at it... sounds like an adventure diving into how systemd
works. :)

--Roger