Bug#811473: systemd: timer with WakeSystem=yes doesn't always start the service it's supposed to trigger

[Christian Pernegger]

Hello again,

I just wanted to document a few further observations & things I tried:

* A dummy timer that just sent me mail every hour (but otherwise configured
identically) managed to wake the system up 20 out of 20 times and did send
mail on 18 of these. Sadly, with the backup.service the track record is
more like fifty-fifty.
* replacing ntpdate with systemd-timesyncd (the whole guarantees monotonic
time thing) does not help

Status after a failed run:
chris at mrmackey:~$ sudo systemctl status backup.service
● backup.service - Pulls configured backups
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/backup.service; static)
   Active: inactive (dead)

chris at mrmackey:~$ sudo systemctl status backup.timer
● backup.timer - Wakes the system up once per day for backups
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/backup.timer; enabled)
   Active: active (waiting) since Don 2016-01-21 13:15:53 CET; 21h ago

chris at mrmackey:~$ sudo systemctl list-timers
NEXT                         LEFT     LAST                         PASSED
UNIT                         ACTIVATES
Sam 2016-01-23 03:00:00 CET  16h left n/a                          n/a
backup.timer                 backup.service
Sam 2016-01-23 10:06:21 CET  23h left Don 2016-01-21 13:30:30 CET  20h ago
systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
[...]

Workarounds galore, of course, but I'd still prefer this function to work
as documented.

Regards,
Christian Pernegger



On 19 January 2016 at 10:36, Christian Pernegger <pernegger at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Package: systemd
> Version: 215-17+deb8u2
> Severity: normal
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to do the following:
> 1) wake up the system every night at 3 am (using a timer unit with
> WakeSystem=yes)
> 2) pull in backups (using a service triggered by the timer unit)
> 3) send it to sleep again (via logind idle timeout)
>
> See attached files backup.timer and backup.service.
>
> Now, step 1 works, it'll always wake up at 3 am, and sometimes
> backup.service will then run as it should, sometimes it won't.
>
> (For completeness' sake: starting backup.service manually always
> works, as does running it on a timer when the machine is already
> up. Same goes for suspend on idle.)
>
> It might be some kind of timing issue but frankly I've no idea where
> to look. The journal doesn't show anything about the timer unit in any
> case, the service unit does get mentioned only because a sudo session
> is opened for it (only when it actually runs).
>
> Regards,
> Christian Pernegger
>
>
>
> -- Package-specific info:
>
> -- System Information:
> Debian Release: 8.2
>   APT prefers stable-updates
>   APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
> Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
>
> Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
> Locale: LANG=de_AT.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_AT.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
> Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
> Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
>
> Versions of packages systemd depends on:
> ii  acl             2.2.52-2
> ii  adduser         3.113+nmu3
> ii  initscripts     2.88dsf-59
> ii  libacl1         2.2.52-2
> ii  libaudit1       1:2.4-1+b1
> ii  libblkid1       2.25.2-6
> ii  libc6           2.19-18+deb8u1
> ii  libcap2         1:2.24-8
> ii  libcap2-bin     1:2.24-8
> ii  libcryptsetup4  2:1.6.6-5
> ii  libgcrypt20     1.6.3-2
> ii  libkmod2        18-3
> ii  liblzma5        5.1.1alpha+20120614-2+b3
> ii  libpam0g        1.1.8-3.1
> ii  libselinux1     2.3-2
> ii  libsystemd0     215-17+deb8u2
> ii  mount           2.25.2-6
> ii  sysv-rc         2.88dsf-59
> ii  udev            215-17+deb8u2
> ii  util-linux      2.25.2-6
>
> Versions of packages systemd recommends:
> ii  dbus            1.8.20-0+deb8u1
> ii  libpam-systemd  215-17+deb8u2
>
> Versions of packages systemd suggests:
> pn  systemd-ui  <none>
>
> -- Configuration Files:
> /etc/systemd/journald.conf changed:
> [Journal]
> Storage=persistent
> Compress=no
>
> /etc/systemd/logind.conf changed:
> [Login]
> IdleAction=suspend
> IdleActionSec=30min
>
>
> -- no debconf information
>
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