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

[Christian Pernegger]

Hello,

it seems like 216 has a change that might affect this, namely giving
OnCalendar-timers an implicit After-dependency on time-sync.target. (The
changelog and most documentation says timeR-sync.target, but Debian's 215
at least doesn't have that.) Easy enough to add manually, but it would be
nice if it were documented in README.Debian.

Then I'd get a few failures because backup.service would be started before
the resume from suspend was actually complete (suspend.target and/or
sleep.target still active), preventing systemd-inhibit from getting a
wake-lock. Now I have After-deps on the suspend, sleep and hybrid-sleep
targets as a workaround.

The band-aids seem to be holding, no missed backups for ~1 week.

Regards,
Christian Pernegger

On 22 January 2016 at 10:39, Christian Pernegger <pernegger at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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