Varnish vcl reload not working with SystemD on Ubuntu 16.04

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on July 18th 2017 - Listed in Linux Varnish Systemd

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When using Varnish, a restart of it is not often wanted because the cache is cleared. For configuration changes in a vcl a reload comes in more handy.

However I came across an issue today, that this reload doesn't work with SystemD.  OS is Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS. The reason for this is the "ExecReload" in the SystemD unit file for Varnish:

# grep ExecReload /etc/systemd/system/varnish.service
ExecReload=/usr/share/varnish/reload-vcl

This command (/usr/share/varnish/reload-vcl) reads the config file /etc/default/varnish - which is now obsolete when using SystemD (see Configure Varnish custom settings on Debian 8 Jessie and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS). An issue on the Github repository of Varnish confirms this bug.

A workaround (and it's a working workaround, I tested it) is to use the new "varnishreload" script. As of this writing this script is not part of the varnish package yet, but will probably soon be added. I downloaded the script and saved it as /usr/sbin/varnishreload (and gave it executable permissions). Then I modified the SystemD unit file for the Varnish service:

# grep ExecReload /etc/systemd/system/varnish.service
ExecReload=/usr/sbin/varnishreload

Followed by a reload of SystemD:

# systemctl daemon-reload

 and a restart of Varnish:

# systemctl restart varnish

To test this, I modified the used vcl (which is not the default.vcl by the way) and removed special debug headers in the new config. If a reload works, Varnish should stop sending this header in the response.

# systemctl reload varnish

# systemctl status varnish
? varnish.service - Varnish Cache, a high-performance HTTP accelerator
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/varnish.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Tue 2017-07-18 15:52:08 CEST; 31min ago
  Process: 7229 ExecReload=/usr/sbin/varnishreload (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 26848 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd -a :6081 -T localhost:6082 -f /etc/varnish/zerberos.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,2048m (code=exited, status
 Main PID: 26850 (varnishd)
    Tasks: 218
   Memory: 143.6M
      CPU: 3.623s
   CGroup: /system.slice/varnish.service
           +-26850 /usr/sbin/varnishd -a :6081 -T localhost:6082 -f /etc/varnish/zerberos.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,2048m
           +-26858 /usr/sbin/varnishd -a :6081 -T localhost:6082 -f /etc/varnish/zerberos.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,2048m

Jul 18 16:22:01 varnish1 varnishd[26850]: CLI telnet ::1 54288 ::1 6082 Wr 200 VCL compiled.
Jul 18 16:22:01 varnish1 varnishreload[7229]: VCL compiled.
Jul 18 16:22:01 varnish1 varnishd[26850]: CLI telnet ::1 54294 ::1 6082 Rd auth b3a13c2d09d6d3551504ace7665994ea9bccab035be9d9518d00ea6f36a8ead3
Jul 18 16:22:01 varnish1 varnishd[26850]: CLI telnet ::1 54294 ::1 6082 Wr 200 -----------------------------
                                            Varnish Cache CLI 1.0
                                            -----------------------------
                                            Linux,4.4.0-77-generic,x86_64,-junix,-smalloc,-smalloc,-hcritbit
                                            varnish-5.1.2 revision 6ece695

                                            Type 'help' for command list.
                                            Type 'quit' to close CLI session.
Jul 18 16:22:01 varnish1 varnishd[26850]: CLI telnet ::1 54294 ::1 6082 Rd ping
Jul 18 16:22:01 varnish1 varnishd[26850]: CLI telnet ::1 54294 ::1 6082 Wr 200 PONG 1500387721 1.0
Jul 18 16:22:01 varnish1 varnishd[26850]: CLI telnet ::1 54294 ::1 6082 Rd vcl.use reload_20170718_162201
Jul 18 16:22:01 varnish1 varnishd[26850]: CLI telnet ::1 54294 ::1 6082 Wr 200 VCL 'reload_20170718_162201' now active
Jul 18 16:22:01 varnish1 varnishreload[7229]: VCL 'reload_20170718_162201' now active
Jul 18 16:22:01 varnish1 systemd[1]: Reloaded Varnish Cache, a high-performance HTTP accelerator.

systemctl status seems to verify a working reload. However don't let yourself be fooled - the same kind of entries also appeared with the non-working reload script before. But a manual check confirmed that the reload of the changed vcl config actually worked; the debug headers were gone in HTTP responses.

Changed the vcl again, re-enabled the headers and ran another systemctl reload varnish. And the headers are back again. So make sure you're using the new varnishreload script when using Varnish on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with SystemD (might also affect other Linux distributions, didn't test that).

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