This failure is related to my latest addition to auditd.service: ReadWritePaths=/etc/audit This is required to have the other systemd service hardening in place (cf. https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1181400#c17). However, this bug only happens when selinux is in enforcing mode. This is because the selinux' auditd_etc_t type doesn't have mounton permission (for namespace mounting). I've spent the day trying to make this work (systemd and selinux are way out of my league), but I think I've managed to fix it. I'll update here tomorrow at the latest.