Bug#947936: chrony: Does (still) not start properly on boot on buster

[Vincent Blut]

Control: tags -1 pending

Santiago, Michael, does that changelog entry about this issue feels 
clear to you?

https://salsa.debian.org/debian/chrony/-/blob/master/debian/changelog


On 2020-01-02T13:38+0100, Santiago Vila wrote:
>Package: chrony
>Version: 3.4-4
>Severity: important
>
>Dear maintainer:
>
>Apparently, installing chrony does not ensure at all that it will work.
>
>Google has moved from ntp in Debian 9 to chrony in Debian 10 for their
>default Debian GCE images, and I discovered this on a lot of GCE
>instances having a clock several minutes off.
>
>The problem I found is very similar to the one described here:
>
>https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=933370
>
>I believe the best summary of the problem was made by Michael Biebl
>here:
>
>https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/7104#issuecomment-471329392
>
>Quoting Michael:
>> As it stands, the current practice of having systemd-timesyncd.service
>> enabled by default (in Debian) and alternative implementations like
>> chrony or ntpd declare Conflicts=systemd-timesyncd.service in their
>> service file does not work reliably.
>
>
>AFAIK, this has been fixed on the systemd side in version 241-3 by
>dropping the "Conflicts" systemd had on chrony or ntpd.
>
>Unfortunately, AFAIK, conflicts are bi-directional, so apparently the
>problem will persist in buster as far as chrony still has conflicts
>in the systemd unit file.
>
>I've noticed this problem happens randomly (it happens in some
>instances, it does not happens in some others), so I don't have a
>"recipe" as such to reproduce it.
>
>However, I have a particular instance at GCE showing this behaviour
>which I could try to clone to give you ssh access if required (please
>contact me privately for details).
>
>The behaviour is the following:
>
>Both systemd-timesyncd and chrony are enabled (which is the default
>on GCE instances). Just after a reboot, "systemctl status chrony" shows this:
>
>● chrony.service - chrony, an NTP client/server
>   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/chrony.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
>   Active: inactive (dead)
>   Docs: man:chronyd(8)
>   man:chronyc(1)
>   man:chrony.conf(5)
>
>and I see this in the boot log:
>
>systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in Network Time Synchronization being skipped.
>
>If I do "systemctl disable systemd-timesyncd" and reboot, chrony is
>properly loaded and it runs.
>
>If I do "systemctl enable systemd-timesyncd" again and reboot, chrony
>is shown as "inactive (dead)" again.
>
>At this point, if I edit /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/chrony.service
>to remove the Conflicts line and reboot, chrony is properly loaded and it runs.
>
>[ I'm reporting this as "important" because I believe it to be the kind
>  of bug that should be fixed in a point release of Debian 10 ].
>
>[ Cc to Michael Biebl in case he would like to comment on the issue ].
>
>Thanks.
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