The problem is the /etc/issue symlink links to /run/issue, which doesn't exist. What does exist is /run/issue.d/. I have no idea how anything does or doesn't appear in /run/. Nothing owns /run/issue.d/, which contains nothing. This has freshly appeared on 3 more installations, all of which had last been dup'd in May and are now on 20221221. What could have replaced /run/issue with /run/issue.d/? # journalctl -u issue-generator.service Jan 17 18:32:52 gx27c systemd[1]: Starting Generate issue file for login session... Jan 17 18:32:53 gx27c systemd[1]: issue-generator.service: Deactivated successfully. Jan 17 18:32:53 gx27c systemd[1]: Finished Generate issue file for login session. -- Boot 24df0727c31c4d99aec5c24c2e283505 -- Jan 17 23:51:22 gx27c systemd[1]: Starting Generate issue file for login session... Jan 17 18:53:33 gx27c systemd[1]: issue-generator.service: Deactivated successfully. Jan 17 18:53:33 gx27c systemd[1]: Finished Generate issue file for login session. -- Boot ff8b495f8b104ffea0442221d07d4635 -- Jan 17 23:05:03 gx27c systemd[1]: Starting Generate issue file for login session... Jan 17 23:05:04 gx27c systemd[1]: issue-generator.service: Deactivated successfully. Jan 17 23:05:04 gx27c systemd[1]: Finished Generate issue file for login session. -- Boot 3696c83e7eae481bb971a42fc4cf69a1 -- Mar 24 00:08:06 gx27c systemd[1]: Starting Generate issue file for login session... Mar 23 20:08:06 gx27c systemd[1]: issue-generator.service: Deactivated successfully. Mar 23 20:08:06 gx27c systemd[1]: Finished Generate issue file for login session. -- Boot cefd34e663be469cb7c8cb6692965b4c -- Mar 24 01:45:19 gx27c systemd[1]: Starting Generate issue file for login session... Mar 24 01:45:28 gx27c systemd[1]: issue-generator.service: Deactivated successfully. Mar 24 01:45:28 gx27c systemd[1]: Finished Generate issue file for login session. -- Boot db8cbe445c5a45c6a2fb466c2507df45 -- May 09 19:31:02 gx27c systemd[1]: Starting Generate issue file for login session... May 09 19:31:37 gx27c systemd[1]: issue-generator.service: Deactivated successfully. May 09 19:31:37 gx27c systemd[1]: Finished Generate issue file for login session. May 09 20:20:05 gx27c systemd[1]: Starting Generate issue file for login session... May 09 20:20:07 gx27c systemd[1]: issue-generator.service: Deactivated successfully. May 09 20:20:07 gx27c systemd[1]: Finished Generate issue file for login session. -- Boot 1ee7ffe4bb2648f1842facde902c7849 -- May 09 23:12:47 gx27c systemd[1]: Starting Generate issue file for login session... May 09 23:13:22 gx27c systemd[1]: issue-generator.service: Deactivated successfully. May 09 23:13:22 gx27c systemd[1]: Finished Generate issue file for login session. -- Boot 98a0e65f46e046b98eea90c27d6e3f19 -- May 16 19:19:51 gx27c systemd[1]: Starting Generate issue file for login session... May 16 19:19:52 gx27c systemd[1]: issue-generator.service: Deactivated successfully. May 16 19:19:52 gx27c systemd[1]: Finished Generate issue file for login session. # ls -l /etc/issue lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Aug 15 2017 /etc/issue -> ../run/issue # ls -l /run/issu* total 0 # ls -l /run/issue.d total 0