> On 22 Jan 2026, at 12:24, [email protected] wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have been running systemd for many years and in general find it
> well-behaved and easy to reason about.
>
> One thing, that drives me nuts though is timer behavior.
>
> For context, this problem has persisted for years across many different
> systemd version (currently 257) both as systemd and user timers.
>
> Today I hit the problem again even if I asked both chatgpt and claude to help
> ensure it will not happen.
>
> The problem is this:
>
> I have a (user) service and a (user) timer, that fires that service every day
> at 18:30. The timer is persistent=no.
> Yesterday, for reasons, the service should not be run, so I stopped the timer
> (around 15:00, if I remember correctly).
> Today, I want the timer to trigger the service at normal runtime (i.e.
> 18:30), and I start the timer here at around 13:00.
>
> Both being far away from the trigger time, I expected (and the llms agreed)
> that it should wait til 18:30 to fire. As stated, persistent is false, I
> specifically check that before activating the timer.
> And then (the problem), it immediately fired the service as I started the
> timer. And I won an hour's worth of cleanup :(
>
> Is that expected behavior, and if so, how do I get the behaviour that I wish
> for?
Can you post the timer unit code please.
How exactly did you stop and then start the timer?
Barry
>
> Regards,
>
> Svenne
