2

First off I've searched for the answer here and it's not the standard disable/purge ntp/chrony. I can run dpkg -l | grep ntp and dpkg -l | grep chrony and neither returns anything, so I know it's not a conflict with that. It's also a fresh vagrant image of ubuntu 20.04 that has no cruft leftover from ugprading from a previous version of ubuntu.

With systemd-timesyncd enabled, at bootup it fails to start and sync time.

    systemctl status systemd-timesyncd
● systemd-timesyncd.service - Network Time Synchronization
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
       Docs: man:systemd-timesyncd.service(8)

There are no conditionals that should block it in /lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service, and it's all defaults

[Unit]
Description=Network Time Synchronization
Documentation=man:systemd-timesyncd.service(8)
ConditionCapability=CAP_SYS_TIME
ConditionVirtualization=!container
DefaultDependencies=no
After=systemd-sysusers.service
Before=time-set.target sysinit.target shutdown.target
Conflicts=shutdown.target
Wants=time-set.target time-sync.target

[Service]
AmbientCapabilities=CAP_SYS_TIME
CapabilityBoundingSet=CAP_SYS_TIME
ExecStart=!!/lib/systemd/systemd-timesyncd
LockPersonality=yes
MemoryDenyWriteExecute=yes
NoNewPrivileges=yes
PrivateDevices=yes
PrivateTmp=yes
ProtectControlGroups=yes
ProtectHome=yes
ProtectHostname=yes
ProtectKernelModules=yes
ProtectKernelTunables=yes
ProtectKernelLogs=yes
ProtectSystem=strict
Restart=always
RestartSec=0
RestrictAddressFamilies=AF_UNIX AF_INET AF_INET6
RestrictNamespaces=yes
RestrictRealtime=yes
RestrictSUIDSGID=yes
RuntimeDirectory=systemd/timesync
StateDirectory=systemd/timesync
SystemCallArchitectures=native
SystemCallErrorNumber=EPERM
SystemCallFilter=@system-service @clock
Type=notify
User=systemd-timesync
WatchdogSec=3min

[Install]
WantedBy=sysinit.target
Alias=dbus-org.freedesktop.timesync1.service

/etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf only has the following

[Time]
NTP=0.us.pool.ntp.org
FallbackNTP=ntp.ubuntu.com 1.us.pool.ntp.org time.cloudflare.com

But when I manually start it with systemctl restart systemd-timesyncd it works just fine, it only gets into the dead state at bootup.

systemctl restart systemd-timesyncd
systemctl status systemd-timesyncd
● systemd-timesyncd.service - Network Time Synchronization
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2021-07-29 20:34:51 UTC; 6s ago
       Docs: man:systemd-timesyncd.service(8)
   Main PID: 1347 (systemd-timesyn)
     Status: "Initial synchronization to time server 23.175.208.10:123 (0.us.pool.ntp.org)."
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 2320)
     Memory: 1.3M
     CGroup: /system.slice/systemd-timesyncd.service
             └─1347 /lib/systemd/systemd-timesyncd

I can even put systemctl restart systemd-timesyncd into rc.local and it works on bootup after rc.local runs. I could go that route and call it good, but it definitely should be working without that. I can't find any indication of failures in /var/log/syslog, either.

If it matters, this is a virtualbox vm, but I need to set this up on ec2 eventually.

Jesse Lee
  • 21
  • 2
  • As I said at the beginning, dpkg -l | grep ntp returns nothing so it is not conflicting with systemd-timesyncd. – Jesse Lee Jul 29 '21 at 21:41
  • Any news? I have the same problem on my ubuntu 20.04 vm Systemd-timesyncd seems to start and stop just like if we asked him Jul 10 22:43:09 bdd systemd[1]: Stopping Network Time Synchronization... Jul 10 22:43:09 bdd systemd[1]: systemd-timesyncd.service: Succeeded. Jul 10 22:43:09 bdd systemd[1]: Stopped Network Time Synchronization. I found the explanation : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67511592/debugging-systemctl-inactive-dead But I don't know how to solve it – Sylvain Bourdette Jul 10 '22 at 21:03

0 Answers0