[pmg-devel] [PATCH pmg-api master v1] systemd: fix report services failing if triggered to early by timers

[Stoiko Ivanov]

Thanks for the patch - and thanks for the attention to detail you took to
the logs on a fresh system - much appreciated!

As said off-list - quickly reading through `systemd.timer(5)`
I'm not sure the `Persistent=true` makes sense for those two particular
timers:
```
...This is useful to catch up on missed runs of the service when the
system was powered down....
```

Most PMG installations are probably not powered down over prolonged
timespans, and even if they are it's probably not helping anyone to get a
spamreport or adminreport covering the time before the system was stopped.
(e.g. `pmgqm` cleans mails which are beyond the quarantine life-time
setting and this runs after the reports are sent out - so it could
probably happen that you get a report and when you view your quarantine
all mails are gone already)

If you find the time - testing if you observe any ill side-effects from
dropping `Persistent=true` (false is the default according to the man-page)
and sending this as a follow-up would be great!

(if you get to that - maybe also add the actual log-messages you saw in the
journal to the commit-message/notes below) as this can help in getting an
overview what's happening)


On Tue, 23 Sep 2025 17:19:24 +0200
"Max R. Carrara" <m.carrara at proxmox.com> wrote:

> Currently, the `pmgreport.service` and `pmgspamreport.service` units
> might fail if their corresponding timers activate them too early.
> 
> To elaborate, both timers have `Persistent=true` in addition to their
> `OnCalendar` option. `Persistent=true` means that the timer's service
> unit will be triggered immediately when the timer is activated, but
> only if it would have been triggered while the timer was inactive [0].
> 
> Since the timers are activated relatively early, they might trigger
> their service units before postfix.service and postgresql.service have
> come up, causing `pmgreport.service`, or `pmgspamreport.service`, or
> both of them to fail.
> 
> Fix this by letting both service units wait until postfix and postgres
> are up, which are necessary for the units to run successfully. Do this
> by adding the `After` and `Wants` options for `postfix.service` and
> `postgresql.service` to both service units.
> 
> Additional context:
> 
> While this is somewhat hard to encounter / debug under normal
> circumstances, it is possible to make this race condition much more
> apparent by adding an arbitrarily long delay to `postgresql.service`
> and `postfix.service` by adding an override for each:
> 
>  # systemctl edit postgresql.service
> 
> Then add the following:
> 
> [Service]
> ExecStartPre=-sleep 15
> 
> Do the same for `postfix.service`.
> 
> Afterwards, change both timers to activate a few seconds after every
> boot by adding an override for each:
> 
>  # systemctl edit pmgreport.timer
> 
> Then add the following:
> 
> [Timer]
> OnCalendar=
> OnBootSec=5
> 
> Do the same for `pmgspamreport.timer`.
> 
> A reboot should now suffice to make the issue reproducible.
> Conversely, the issue should not appear if this commit is applied.
> (Also, don't forget to remove the overrides again after debugging.)
> 
> [0]: `man 5 systemd.timer`
> 
> Signed-off-by: Max R. Carrara <m.carrara at proxmox.com>
> ---
>  debian/pmgreport.service     | 4 ++++
>  debian/pmgspamreport.service | 4 ++++
>  2 files changed, 8 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/debian/pmgreport.service b/debian/pmgreport.service
> index 6b05213..89e25c7 100644
> --- a/debian/pmgreport.service
> +++ b/debian/pmgreport.service
> @@ -1,6 +1,10 @@
>  [Unit]
>  Description=Send Daily System Report Mail
>  ConditionPathExists=/usr/bin/pmgreport
> +After=postfix.service
> +After=postgresql.service
> +Wants=postfix.service
> +Wants=postgresql.service
>  
>  [Service]
>  Type=oneshot
> diff --git a/debian/pmgspamreport.service b/debian/pmgspamreport.service
> index a20214f..2b4f163 100644
> --- a/debian/pmgspamreport.service
> +++ b/debian/pmgspamreport.service
> @@ -1,6 +1,10 @@
>  [Unit]
>  Description=Send Daily Spam Report Mails
>  ConditionPathExists=/usr/bin/pmgqm
> +After=postfix.service
> +After=postgresql.service
> +Wants=postfix.service
> +Wants=postgresql.service
>  
>  [Service]
>  Type=oneshot