systemctl showing different behaviour of binary

Question

I have developed one OTA(Over The Air) manager which uses "swupdate" command internally to update the firmware. This swupdate is applied by "system()" function inside OTA manager code.

My binary is working as expected and "swupdate" command is working fine if I run my binary ota_manager directly from console.

I have created one systemctl service for my binary as below:

[Unit]
Description=OTA manager service
After=syslogd.service

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ota_manager

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

If I run this service, swupdate command is always failing with error:

SWUPDATE failed [0] ERROR handlers/archive_handler.c : extract : 110 : archive_read_next_header(): Pathname can't be converted from UTF-8 to current locale

I am checking swupdate error but I don't think it is a swupdate issue as it is working fine if I apply the command manually on the console or I run ota_manager binary directly from the console. It is looking like systemctl is creating the issue.

I am using NXP IMX6ULL based custom hardware with hardknott version Yocto OS(5.10 kernel). Note: I have validated same with warrior version Yocto OS(4.19 kernel) and same code is working fine with systemctl service as well.

Do anyone has any pointers here?

Answer 1

Found root cause:

• "swupdate" command requires "locale" settings to be set as environment variables so if they are not set it gives such kind of error.
• In my gateway, that environment variables were set as a custom profile of console. So swupdate command works fine from console
• If swupdate command provided as "system()" call from application, it was running in background sub shell in which this custom profile was not loaded and so "locale" environment variables were not present.