can't start minio server in ubuntu with systemctl start minio - minio

Question

I configured a minio instance server on the ubuntu 18.04 with the guide from https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-an-object-storage-server-using-minio-on-ubuntu-18-04.
after the installation, the server failed to start with the command "sudo systemctl start minio", the error is saying :
root#iZbp1icuzly3aac0dmjz9aZ:~# sudo systemctl status minio
● minio.service - MinIO
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/minio.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2021-12-23 17:11:56 CST; 4s ago
Docs: https://docs.min.io
Process: 9085 ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/minio server $MINIO_OPTS $MINIO_VOLUMES (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Process: 9084 ExecStartPre=/bin/bash -c if [ -z "${MINIO_VOLUMES}" ]; then echo "Variable MINIO_VOLUMES not set in /etc/default/minio"; exit 1; fi (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 9085 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Dec 23 17:11:56 iZbp1icuzly3aac0dmjz9aZ systemd[1]: minio.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Dec 23 17:11:56 iZbp1icuzly3aac0dmjz9aZ systemd[1]: minio.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 23 17:11:56 iZbp1icuzly3aac0dmjz9aZ systemd[1]: minio.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Dec 23 17:11:56 iZbp1icuzly3aac0dmjz9aZ systemd[1]: minio.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 5.
Dec 23 17:11:56 iZbp1icuzly3aac0dmjz9aZ systemd[1]: Stopped MinIO.
Dec 23 17:11:56 iZbp1icuzly3aac0dmjz9aZ systemd[1]: minio.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Dec 23 17:11:56 iZbp1icuzly3aac0dmjz9aZ systemd[1]: minio.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Dec 23 17:11:56 iZbp1icuzly3aac0dmjz9aZ systemd[1]: Failed to start MinIO.
It looks like the reason is the Variable MINIO_VOLUMES not set in /etc/default/minio.
However, I double check the file from /etc/default/minio
MINIO_ACCESS_KEY="minioadmin"
MINIO_VOLUMES="/usr/local/share/minio/"
MINIO_OPTS="-C /etc/minio --address localhost:9001"
MINIO_SECRET_KEY="minioadmin"
I have set the value MINIO_VOLUMES.
I tried to start manually with minio server --address :9001 /usr/local/share/minio/, it works.
now I don't know what goes wrong with starting the minio server by using the systemctl start minio

Answer 1

I'd recommend sticking to the official documentation wherever possible. It's intended for distributed deployments but the only real change is that your MINIO_VOLUMES will be for a single node/drive.
I would recommend trying a combination of things here:
Review minio.service and ensure the user/group exists
Review file path permissions on the MINIO_VOLUMES value
Now for the why:
My guess without seeing further logs (journalctl -u minio would have been helpful here) is that this is a combination of two things:
the minio.service user/group doesn't have rwx permissions on the /usr/local/share/minio path,
you are missing an environment variable we recently introduced to prevent users from pointing at their root drive (this was intended as a safety measure, but somewhat complicates these kinds of smaller setups).
Take a look at these lines in the minio.service file - I'm assuming that is what you are using based on the instructions in the DO guide.
If you ls -al /usr/local/share/minio I would venture it has ROOT permissions for user and group and limited write access if any.
Hope this helps - for further troubleshooting having at least 10-20 lines from journalctl is invaluable, as it would show the actual error and not just the final quit message.