Systemd timers not triggering services?

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1

Hi y’all!

I’m having a weird issue with my server. It claims to be triggering my timers properly, but the services themselves have no logs. My timers were set up through standard NixOS options, i.e. not manually written.

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Here is (roughly) my application config:

{ agenix, config, ... }: {
  services.paperless = {
    enable = true;
    settings = {
      PAPERLESS_URL = "https://<redacted>";
    };

    exporter = {
      enable = true;
      onCalendar = "05:30:00";
    };
  };

  services.restic.backups.paperless = {
    paths = [
      config.services.paperless.exporter.directory
    ];
    repository = "/some/local/path";
    initialize = true;
    passwordFile = config.age.secrets.restic-paperless-password.path;
    timerConfig.OnCalendar = "06:00";
    pruneOpts = [
      "--keep-yearly 7"
      "--keep-monthly 72"
      "--keep-weekly 36"
      "--keep-daily 31"
    ];
  };
}

I can upload my flake.lock if necessary. Thanks in advance!

2

Are you sure they are not triggered? For me it looks like it works it even says Triggering OnSuccess= dependencies? Maybe the exporter just prints error logs?

3

If you look at the dates you can see that the timer triggered many, many times, but the service only reports triggering twice. And that last service trigger was when I ran it manually :confused:

4

Those logs aren’t showing the triggers, they’re showing the starts of the timer unit.

1 Like
5

Ah, ok. Sorry I overlooked that. That is indeed strange.

Tbh, I’m not a big expert on systemd timers and I don’t have paperless running. But for my restic backups the timer logged only the start once and still triggers every day. I wonder why yours starts every day at 7:00?

6

What is the output of systemctl status paperless-exporter.timer?

8

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Pretty sure I’m an idiot. All these timers are set to run before 07:00, but I have a home assistant automation that turns off the server between 03:00 and 07:00. I’ve changed the trigger times and hopefully that solves the issue.

Sorry for wasting everyone’s time!

1 Like
9

No worries. Things like that happen way to often to me as well. I’m glad you found a possible reason.

And I learned something new: systemd timers just log once they are started not when they are triggered. And it was the first time for me to look at the status of my timer as well. As they worked I never had to do it before. So we both benefit from it. :slight_smile:

PS: You could make it more resistant to timing errors if you also set Persistent=true on the timer: systemd.timer

1 Like