How to start Renderd service? Why "/var/run/renderd" folder is beeing deleted after restart?

Hello,

I am trying to create my own OSM server. I am using Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS running on a VirtualBox as guest system. I am doing the setup with the nice tutorial on switch2osm.org site for Ubuntu 16.04.2. I did all the steps there.

I am having issues with renderd service. One of them is that after each server restart this folder is beeing deleted by unknown reasons.

If I run below command after server restart

journalctl -b0 _PID=1 | grep Failed

it shows following output:

Mar 24 16:11:22 huawei-VirtualBox systemd[1]: Failed to start Renderd.
Mar 24 16:11:22 huawei-VirtualBox systemd[1]: renderd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

When I check /var/run/renderd it does not exist anymore.

Then again I repeat following commands:

sudo mkdir /var/run/renderd
sudo chown huawei /var/run/renderd

and folder is there again. Just in case I am reloading apache with:

sudo service apache2 reload

Then comes my second problem.

If I run the service in the foreground it looks like starting ok - below is an extract after execution (in fact there are about 82 warning for "unable to find face-name" - I have no idea whether this is a problem).

...
renderd[5539]: Loading parameterization function for 
renderd[5539]: Starting stats thread
...
Mapnik LOG> 2018-03-24 16:51:03: warning: unable to find face-name 'HanaMinB Regular' in FontSet 'fontset-2'
Mapnik LOG> 2018-03-24 16:51:03: warning: unable to find face-name 'unifont Medium' in FontSet 'fontset-2'
renderd[5539]: Using web mercator projection settings
renderd[5539]: Using web mercator projection settings

After ctrl+c I am starting the service with:

huawei@huawei-VirtualBox:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/renderd start
#

According to the manual it should return “[ ok ] Starting renderd (via systemctl): renderd.service.”, but this does not happen and only # stays. When I type exit following appears:

[....] Starting renderd (via systemctl): renderd.serviceJob for renderd.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status renderd.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
 failed!

Then if I run again

journalctl -b0 _PID=1 | grep Failed

it shows the same error message as in the beginning of my question.

Mar 24 17:01:52 huawei-VirtualBox systemd[1]: Failed to start Renderd.
Mar 24 17:01:52 huawei-VirtualBox systemd[1]: renderd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Interesting is that the time above is the time of executing Exit and not the time of service start attempt.

One other thing that can put some light on my problem. When I try to set server to pre-render tiles with

render_list -m default -a -z 0 -Z 10

following error output is received (the command is taken from another tutorial):

debug: init_storage_backend: initialising file storage backend at: /var/lib/mod_tile
Rendering client
Starting 1 rendering threads
Rendering all tiles from zoom 0 to zoom 10
Rendering all tiles for zoom 0 from (0, 0) to (0, 0)
Rendering all tiles for zoom 1 from (0, 0) to (1, 1)
Rendering all tiles for zoom 2 from (0, 0) to (3, 3)
Rendering all tiles for zoom 3 from (0, 0) to (7, 7)
Rendering all tiles for zoom 4 from (0, 0) to (15, 15)
Rendering all tiles for zoom 5 from (0, 0) to (31, 31)
Rendering all tiles for zoom 6 from (0, 0) to (63, 63)
socket connect failed for: /var/run/renderd/renderd.sock

Folder "/var/run/renderd" and file "renderd.sock" exist.

What could be wrong with my configuration and where I could possibly search for the problem? I would be very happy for some thoughts and suggestions. Thank you in advance!