Failed to start clickhouse server with error that service did not take the steps required by its unit configuration.

Attempting to start clickhouse server this morning and immediately receiving this error.

sudo service clickhouse-server start

Job for clickhouse-server.service failed because the service did not take the steps required by its unit configuration.

See "systemctl status clickhouse-server.service" and "journalctl -xeu clickhouse-server.service" for details.

Error

/var/log/clickhouse-server/clickhouse-server.err.log

2026.03.13 13:27:23.755894 [ 133253 ] {} <Error> Application: Code: 210. DB::Exception: Listen [::]:9009 failed: Poco::Exception. Code: 1000, e.code() = 0, DNS error: EAI: Address family for hostname not supported (version 26.2.4.23 (official build)). (NETWORK_ERROR), Stack trace (when copying this message, always include the lines below):

Google Search came up with this.

The EAI: Address family for hostname not supported error in ClickHouse usually means that IPv6 is disabled on your server's operating system, but ClickHouse is configured to listen on an IPv6 address by default.

Resolution

/etc/clickhouse-server/config.d/listen.xml

<clickhouse>
<listen_host>::</listen_host>
</clickhouse>

To

<clickhouse>

<listen_host>0.0.0.0</listen_host>

</clickhouse>

Retried and successful. The status is Active

sudo service clickhouse-server start

sudo service clickhouse-server status|grep Active

Active: active (running) since Fri 2026-03-13 13:28:02 MDT; 25min ago