Trouble with snapd- "Unit var.mount is masked"

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1

Hello,

I need to install an app that isn’t available in the opensuse repositories and needs to be installed through snapd so I followed the instructions over at: https://snapcraft.io/docs/installing-snap-on-opensuse but running this (as instructed)

sudo systemctl enabled --now snapd.apparmor

I get

Failed to start snapd.apparmor.service: Unit var.mount is masked

So I tried

sudo systemctl unmask var.mount

which silently completes. Try to run

sudo systemctl enabled --now snapd.apparmor

again with the same error as above.
Carrying on hoping it doesn’t affect things I try to run

sudo snap install <softwarename>

and get

error: cannot perform the following tasks:
- Mount snap "snapd" (12398) ([start snap-snapd-12398.mount] failed with exit status 1: Failed to start snap-snapd-12398.mount: Unit var.mount is masked.

So whatever this Unit var.mount is masked thing means is definitely of the way of snapd working, can anyone help me? I can’t really find anything about it on the web and trying to unmask it myself doesn’t seem to do anything. Thank you.

2

So what is “sudo systemctl status var.mount” giving you? Only unmasking it might not start it.

3 
sudo systemctl status var.mount
[sudo] password for root:
 var.mount - /var
     Loaded: masked (Reason: Unit var.mount is masked.)
     Active: active (mounted) since Wed 2021-06-30 16:01:14 BST; 2 days ago
      Where: /var
       What: /dev/sdd2
      Tasks: 0 (limit: 4070)
        CPU: 3ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/var.mount

So that confirms it is still masked even after running unmask. Now I guess the question is, how does one actually unmask it?

4

Show output of

find /usr/lib/systemd /run/systemd /etc/systemd -name var.mount
systemctl list-unit-files var.mount
5

find /usr/lib/systemd /run/systemd /etc/systemd -name var.mount

/run/systemd/generator/var.mount
/run/systemd/generator/local-fs.target.requires/var.mount
/run/systemd/system/var.mount

systemctl list-unit-files var.mount

UNIT FILE STATES          VENDOR PRESET
var.mount masked-runtime disabled

1 unit files listed.
6

Well, to remove it run “systemctl --runtime unmask var.mount” but something created it, you need to find out what. Do you have this unit masked immediately after reboot?

7

Oddly enough it is not masked right after a reboot. I had rebooted before as per the instructions on snapcraft.io and it was masked.
This time around I rebooted, ran the check and it said loaded instead of masked.

sudo systemctl status var.mount[sudo] password for root:
 var.mount - /var
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/fstab; generated)
     Active: active (mounted) since Wed 2021-06-30 16:01:14 BST; 2 days ago
      Where: /var
       What: /dev/sdd2
      Tasks: 0 (limit: 4070)
        CPU: 3ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/var.mount

Figuring I could carry on with the installation I initially intended to do that also went swimmingly. So thank you for the help as things are working as intended now, although I’m not quite why.