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Qradar: hostservices unable to start due to conman service in failed state

Troubleshooting


Problem

In some scenarios, the hostservices might not start due to conman service in a failed state, hostservices was found in a failed state. Investigation showed that conman was also in a failed state, which prevented hostservices from starting successfully.

[root@HOST ~]# systemctl status hostservices
● hostservices.service - hostservices alias script
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/hostservices.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since
Main PID: 982797 (code=exited, status=255)
systemd[1]: Starting hostservices alias script...
hostservices.sh[982797]: Successfully started 'postgresql-qrd'
hostservices.sh[982797]: Running database sanity checks: OK
hostservices.sh[982797]: Ariel Copy has not been properly configured, not starting ariel_copy. This is Expected on a system not config>
hostservices.sh[991809]: Job for conman.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
hostservices.sh[991809]: See "systemctl status conman.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
systemd[1]: hostservices.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=255/n/a
systemd[1]: hostservices.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
systemd[1]: Failed to start hostservices alias script.

 

conman-server[977788]:  open /etc/conman/tls/conman_ca.crt: no such file or directory
systemd[1]: conman.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
systemd[1]: conman.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
systemd[1]: Failed to start conman.

 

conman service relies on TLS certificate files, so if a required certificate such as conman_ca.crt is missing, the service can fail to start. When conman is down, dependent services such as hostservices will also fail to start.

 

Cause

The issue was caused by a missing TLS certificate file that is required by the conman service:

 
/etc/conman/tls/conman_ca.crt
 

Since the certificate file was not present on the Managed host, the conman service failed during startup.
As hostservices depends on the conman service, it also remained in a failed state.

 

Diagnosing The Problem

  1. Check the status of hostservices and check if the error relates to conman service in failed state:

    systemctl status hostservices

  2. Verify the status of the conman service:

    systemctl status conman

  3. Identify if the error indicates a missing certificate file:

    Example-

    conman-server[977788]:  open /etc/conman/tls/conman_ca.crt: no such file or directory
systemd[1]: conman.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
systemd[1]: conman.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
systemd[1]: Failed to start conman.

  4. Confirm that the file is missing:

    ls -l /etc/conman/tls/

     

Resolving The Problem

Steps :-

  1. Copy the missing certificate file from the Console to the Managed Host:

    scp /etc/conman/tls/conman_ca.crt MH_IP:/etc/conman/tls/

  2. Start the conman service:

    systemctl start conman

  3. Verify that the service is running:

    systemctl status conman

  4. Start hostservices:

    systemctl start hostservices

  5. Confirm that the hostservices is active and running:

    systemctl status hostservices



Summary

The issue is caused because of a missing conman CA certificate file, which prevented the conman service from starting. Restoring the certificate resolved both conman and hostservices failures.

Document Location

Worldwide

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Document Information

Modified date:
22 April 2026

UID

ibm17269549

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