Unable to start SQL Server on Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I had SQL Server v.Next public preview on my Ubuntu 16.04 machine installed and working yesterday. But it's not working today.

Getting below error:

root@OraServer:/var/opt/mssql/log# systemctl status mssql-server
● mssql-server.service - Microsoft(R) SQL Server(R) Database Engine
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mssql-server.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2016-11-27 13:34:23 IST; 18s ago
  Process: 6368 ExecStart=/opt/mssql/bin/sqlservr (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
 Main PID: 6368 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Nov 27 13:34:23 OraServer systemd[1]: mssql-server.service: Unit entered failed state.
Nov 27 13:34:23 OraServer systemd[1]: mssql-server.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Nov 27 13:34:23 OraServer systemd[1]: mssql-server.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Nov 27 13:34:23 OraServer systemd[1]: Stopped Microsoft(R) SQL Server(R) Database Engine.
Nov 27 13:34:23 OraServer systemd[1]: mssql-server.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Nov 27 13:34:23 OraServer systemd[1]: Failed to start Microsoft(R) SQL Server(R) Database Engine.

I couldn't see anything in SQL server error logs. You can say no logs at all after the last reboot.

Answer 1

SQL Server did not start because the OS did not have 3250MB of memory. Was tracked by below command

journalctl -u mssql-server.service -b

Nov 30 00:43:21 OraServer sqlservr[4075]: 
 sqlservr: This program requires a machine with at least 3250 megabytes of memory.

Memory was added and SQL Server was started:

systemctl status mssql-server

Answer 2

I was getting the same error:

Start request repeated too quickly

But for a different reason, which was revealed by the same command as @Rak:

journalctl -u mssql-server.service -b

...

Error: Directory [/var/opt/mssql/system/] could not be created.

Trying to create this directory revealed the issue (permissions), restarting the service as sudo resolved this.