Nginx – Systemd – start service only after DNS is available

domain-name-systemnginxpowerdnssystemd

I've got a couple services, most notably nginx and ntpd, that depend on having working DNS resolution to start properly. Right now neither of these services start correctly at boot time, but do start fine when manually intervened on once the machine is up, with some messages in the logs about not being able to resolve names.

This leads me to believe I'm having a race condition with systemd. My servers point to 127.0.0.1 for their nameservers. Binded to localhost:53 is pdns-recursor. I've set ntp and nginx to be WantedBy pdns-recursor in their unit files as follows

[Unit]
WantedBy=pdns-recursor.service

However I still receive log messages in both nginx and ntp about failing to resolve names at boot time.

How can I verify that DNS is completely up before these services attempt to start? I am using Ubuntu 16.04

Aug 09 22:35:25 host.blah ntpd[3574]: restrict: ignoring line 21, address/host 'ntp.blah' unusable.
Aug 09 22:35:26 host.blah ntpd[3574]: restrict: ignoring line 23, address/host 'ntp.blah' unusable.
Aug 09 22:35:28 host.blah ntpd[3574]: restrict: ignoring line 25, address/host 'ntp.blah' unusable.
Aug 09 22:35:29 host.blah ntpd[3574]: restrict: ignoring line 27, address/host 'ntp.blah' unusable.

Best Answer

Try using:

[Unit]
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

There's a full write-up on Unix & Linux as well as on the FreeDesktop site.

Related Solutions

Systemd – How to Set Environment Variable in Service

Times change and so do best practices.

The current best way to do this is to run systemctl edit myservice, which will create an override file for you or let you edit an existing one.

In normal installations this will create a directory /etc/systemd/system/myservice.service.d, and inside that directory create a file whose name ends in .conf (typically, override.conf), and in this file you can add to or override any part of the unit shipped by the distribution.

For instance, in a file /etc/systemd/system/myservice.service.d/myenv.conf:

[Service]
Environment="SECRET=pGNqduRFkB4K9C2vijOmUDa2kPtUhArN"
Environment="ANOTHER_SECRET=JP8YLOc2bsNlrGuD6LVTq7L36obpjzxd"

Also note that if the directory exists and is empty, your service will be disabled! If you don't intend to put something in the directory, ensure that it does not exist.

For reference, the old way was:

The recommended way to do this is to create a file /etc/sysconfig/myservice which contains your variables, and then load them with EnvironmentFile.

For complete details, see Fedora's documentation on how to write a systemd script.

Find the location of a systemd unit file service

For units that are defined in actual, static files, this can be seen in systemctl status:

$ systemctl status halt-local.service
● halt-local.service - /usr/sbin/halt.local Compatibility
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/halt-local.service; static)
   Active: inactive (dead)

But there are units that are not defined by files, e.g. with systemd-cron installed. These have no useful location listed with status:

$ systemctl status cron-jojo-0.timer
● cron-jojo-0.timer - [Cron] "*/10 * * * * ..."
   Loaded: loaded (/var/spool/cron/crontabs/jojo)
   Active: active (waiting) since Mon 2015-05-18 14:53:01 UTC; 9min ago

In either case, though, the FragmentPath field is educating:

$ systemctl show -p FragmentPath cron-daily.service
FragmentPath=/lib/systemd/system/cron-daily.service
$ systemctl show -p FragmentPath cron-jojo-0.service
FragmentPath=/run/systemd/generator/cron-jojo-0.service
$ systemctl show -p FragmentPath halt-local.service
FragmentPath=/lib/systemd/system/halt-local.service

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Systemd – How to Set Environment Variable in Service

Find the location of a systemd unit file service

Related Topic