23.06.2025 08:00, Christopher Hunt wrote:
Howdy,
I’m looking for some clarification on BindsTo as I’m wondering if there’s some
clarification required in the doc (1). I think I’m perhaps misinterpreting what the
doc is referring to as “active" i.e:
"When used in conjunction with After= on the same unit the behaviour of BindsTo= is
even stronger. In this case, the unit bound to strictly has to be in active state for
this unit to also be in active state."
The key word here is “active” and perhaps mistakenly, interpret the above that
a dependent service will have its starting deferred. To explain:
Given a service A set up as a notification service i.e.:
Type=notify
NotifyAccess=all
…and this service takes a few seconds to signal that it is active via:
systemd-notify —ready
…and we have service B binding to it:
After=A.service
BindsTo=A.service
I see a Job B.service/start failed with result ‘dependency’ on startup.
Shouldn’t systemd cause the start of B to wait until the systemd-notify conveys
that A is ready i.e. active?
How A.service and B.service are started exactly?
I’d like to offer updating the doc upon clarification.
Thanks.
Kind regards,
Christopher
(1) https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd.unit.html