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Added a question about the fact that I cannot see a way to get the amount of time left on a timer.
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Alexis Wilke
Alexis Wilke
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So I was also wondering, how can I know when the timer will tick next? Because that would immediately tell me whether it's in 5 min. or 30 min. but from the systemctl status snapbackend.timer says nothing about that. Just wondering whether there is a command that would tell me the delay currently used.

For those interested, there is the service file too (/lib/systemd/system/snapbackend.service), although I would imagine that this should have no effect on the timer ticks...

For those interested, there is the service file too (/lib/systemd/system/snapbackend.service), although I would imagine that this should have no effect on the timer ticks...

So I was also wondering, how can I know when the timer will tick next? Because that would immediately tell me whether it's in 5 min. or 30 min. but from the systemctl status snapbackend.timer says nothing about that. Just wondering whether there is a command that would tell me the delay currently used.

For those interested, there is the service file too (/lib/systemd/system/snapbackend.service), although I would imagine that this should have no effect on the timer ticks...

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Alexis Wilke
Alexis Wilke
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Is there a way to know when a systemd timer will run next?

I am testing a systemd timer and trying to override its default timeout, but without success. I'm wondering whether there is a way to ask systemd to tell us when the service is going to be run next.

Normal file (/lib/systemd/system/snapbackend.timer):

# Documentation available at:
# https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.timer.html

[Unit]
Description=Run the snapbackend service once every 5 minutes.

[Timer]
# You must have an OnBootSec (or OnStartupSec) otherwise it does not auto-start
OnBootSec=5min
OnUnitActiveSec=5min
# The default accuracy is 1 minute. I'm not too sure that either way
# will affect us. I am thinking that since our computers will be
# permanently running, it probably won't be that inaccurate anyway.
# See also:
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/39176514/is-it-correct-that-systemd-timer-accuracysec-parameter-make-the-ticks-slip
#AccuracySec=1

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

# vim: syntax=dosini

The override file (/etc/systemd/system/snapbackend.timer.d/override.conf):

# This file was auto-generated by snapmanager.cgi
# Feel free to do additional modifications here as
# snapmanager.cgi will be aware of them as expected.
[Timer]
OnUnitActiveSec=30min

I ran the following commands and the timer still ticks once every 5 minutes. Could there be a bug in systemd?

sudo systemctl stop snapbackend.timer
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start snapbackend.timer

For those interested, there is the service file too (/lib/systemd/system/snapbackend.service), although I would imagine that this should have no effect on the timer ticks...

# Documentation available at:
# https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.service.html

[Unit]
Description=Snap! Websites snapbackend CRON daemon
After=snapbase.service snapcommunicator.service snapfirewall.service snaplock.service snapdbproxy.service

[Service]
# See also the snapbackend.timer file
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=~
ProtectHome=true
NoNewPrivileges=true
ExecStart=/usr/bin/snapbackend
ExecStop=/usr/bin/snapstop --timeout 300 $MAINPID
User=snapwebsites
Group=snapwebsites
# No auto-restart, we use the timer to start once in a while
# We also want to make systemd think that exit(1) is fine
SuccessExitStatus=1
Nice=5
LimitNPROC=1000
# For developers and administrators to get console output
#StandardOutput=tty
#StandardError=tty
#TTYPath=/dev/console
# Enter a size to get a core dump in case of a crash
#LimitCORE=10G

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

# vim: syntax=dosini