core/timer: Prevent timer looping when unit cannot start
authorMichal Koutný <mkoutny@suse.com>
Tue, 16 Jan 2018 18:22:46 +0000 (19:22 +0100)
committerLennart Poettering <lennart@poettering.net>
Mon, 22 Jan 2018 16:13:00 +0000 (17:13 +0100)
commit204d140c4def364c47d36226e4514a7e077fa196
tree99b38c17582fec897e97c9dc6650b0cb42cc27b5
parent3e52ec43011f0b7f72c5bf43ce60fa855d1a0ee2
core/timer: Prevent timer looping when unit cannot start

When a unit job finishes early (e.g. when fork(2) fails) triggered unit goes
through states
        stopped->failed (or failed->failed),
in case a ExecStart= command fails unit passes through
        stopped->starting->failed.

The former transition doesn't result in unit active/inactive timestamp being
updated and timer (OnUnitActiveSec= or OnUnitInactiveSec=) would use an expired
timestamp triggering immediately again (repeatedly).

This patch exploits timer's last trigger timestamp to ensure the timer isn't
triggered more frequently than OnUnitActiveSec=/OnUnitInactiveSec= period.

Steps to reproduce:

0) Create sample units:

cat >~/.config/systemd/user/looper.service <<EOD
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/sleep 2
EOD

cat >~/.config/systemd/user/looper.timer <<EOD
[Timer]
AccuracySec=5
OnUnitActiveSec=5
EOD

1) systemctl --user daemon-reload

2) systemctl --user start looper.timer
   # to have first activation timestamp/sentinel
   systemctl --user start looper.service

o  Observe the service is being regularly triggered.

3) systemctl set-property user@$UID.service TasksMax=2

o  Observe the tight looping as long as the looper.service cannot be started.

Ref: #5969
src/core/timer.c