systemd never starts ntpd.service even though it is enabled

[Sam Varshavchik]

For some reason, ntpd.service never starts when one of my laptop boots.

systemctl status ntpd.service says:

ntpd.service - Network Time Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ntpd.service; enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

It's enabled. It should start, or at least attempt to start and fail for  
some reason. It doesn't even start. After the laptop finishes booting, I can  
manually execute systemctl start ntpd.service, and ntpd comes up just fine.

journalctl /usr/sbin/ntpd doesn't report anything, except when I manually  
start ntpd after boot.

ntpd.service is unmodified, and identical to my other laptop, and all my  
servers, all of which have no issues starting ntpd during boot.

Stumped on this one.

[Ed Greshko]

On 08/24/14 09:57, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> For some reason, ntpd.service never starts when one of my laptop boots.
>
> systemctl status ntpd.service says:
>
> ntpd.service - Network Time Service
>   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ntpd.service; enabled)
>   Active: inactive (dead)
>
> It's enabled. It should start, or at least attempt to start and fail for some reason. It doesn't even start. After the laptop finishes booting, I can manually execute systemctl start ntpd.service, and ntpd comes up just fine.
>
> journalctl /usr/sbin/ntpd doesn't report anything, except when I manually start ntpd after boot.
>
> ntpd.service is unmodified, and identical to my other laptop, and all my servers, all of which have no issues starting ntpd during boot.
>
> Stumped on this one.

This will happen if you have both ntpd.service and chronyd.service enabled.

[Thomas Horsley]

Probably this: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2014-July/451332.html

[Bill Davidsen]

Thomas Horsley wrote:
> Probably this: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2014-July/451332.html

Thanks, this is undoubtedly why I have had to start (or restart) a bunch of 
stuff after the net-fs is working. My rc.local is basically a
while net-not-up; do
  sleep 1
done
stuff that failed

Have to look and see how hard it is to go back to sysvinit, which is dumb but 
reliable within its limited capabilities.

[Sam Varshavchik]

Bill Davidsen writes:
> Thomas Horsley wrote:
> > Probably this: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2014-July/ 
> > 451332.html
>
> Thanks, this is undoubtedly why I have had to start (or restart) a bunch of  
> stuff after the net-fs is working. My rc.local is basically a
> while net-not-up; do
>  sleep 1
> done
> stuff that failed
>
> Have to look and see how hard it is to go back to sysvinit, which is dumb  
> but reliable within its limited capabilities.

For me, wait-for-network.service appears to be working fairly reliably. Just  
in case anyone wants it, without having to dig through that sordid thread,  
save this in /etc/systemd/system, and don't forget to systemctl enable it.  
Of course, this will only work until systemd's dependency resolution logic  
changes again, with no advance notice:

[Unit]
Description=Wait for network ports to be initialized
Before=network.target network-online.target
After=network.service
Wants=network.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[Kevin Fenzi]

Also, for those that don't want to dig through the thread mentioned you
can just read the bug:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1119787

kevin