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#1 2013-02-18 05:31:17

boak
Member
Registered: 2013-01-17
Posts: 13

Thousands of log entries for systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer on boot

I'm running a 32 bit Arch install as a VMware ESXi 5.1 guest. Whenever the guest boots up, I get several thousand of the following entries in the system log:

Feb 18 12:49:01 squid systemd[1]: systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer: time change, recalculating next elapse.

The most recent boot had almost 20,000 entries within 5 seconds:

$ sudo journalctl -b | grep systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer | wc -l
19693

$ sudo journalctl -b | grep systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer | sed -n '1p;$p'
Feb 18 12:49:01 squid systemd[1]: systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer: time change, recalculating next elapse.
Feb 18 12:49:06 squid systemd[1]: systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer: time change, recalculating next elapse.

I've pasted the entry into Google but have not come up with anything helpful.

I have disabled host-guest time sync:

$ vmware-toolbox-cmd timesync status
Disabled

There is a NTP daemon running that syncs time with a single windows server (which is also a guest on the same ESXi host).

As far as I'm aware there shouldn't be anything else playing with the time, but theres obviously something going on.

Can anyone please help me troubleshoot?

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#2 2013-02-18 06:25:41

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: Thousands of log entries for systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer on boot

Could it be because it is seeing the windows time (local time) as the hardware clock, so it is similar to when you dual boot windows and linux?  Linux wants to put it back in UTC, so until ntpd can sync, it totally messes with time dependent services on the system?

In any case, maybe you could adjust the necessary value in journald.conf so that a given service cannot write into the journal more than X number of times in a given time period.

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#3 2013-02-19 21:12:14

rashkov
Member
Registered: 2013-02-19
Posts: 2

Re: Thousands of log entries for systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer on boot

I was getting this issue earlier today, but it has cleared up. I've been troubleshooting another issue (linked to below) that may have contributed to this clearing up, but also maybe it's just because I've done a full shutdown. Have you tried fully shutting down the VM, wait a little while, and see if clears up?

I was working on this issue earlier today at the same time as this issue: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=152097
After implementing alexoz' suggestion this one seemed to have resolved. HOWEVER, I haven't been tracking this issue for long so maybe it is just intermittent and will come back.

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#4 2013-03-04 13:59:44

boak
Member
Registered: 2013-01-17
Posts: 13

Re: Thousands of log entries for systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer on boot

yes i've tried shutting down the VM completely but the problem still occurs. I've also done a fresh install of a seperate VM under Microsoft Hyper-V and I'm having a similar issue. In this guest, the message also shows every 30 minutes in addition to the ones generated at boot. The tmpfile cleanup routine appears to run once per day as expected despite the log entries.

with regards to the vmtools issue, I had the same issues on my ESXi guest which I resolved by changing the kill signal given by systemd. This seems unrelated to my issue however as the log entres are still generated.

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#5 2013-03-14 13:36:49

BertiBoeller
Member
Registered: 2009-01-19
Posts: 58

Re: Thousands of log entries for systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer on boot

I've had the same problem and I don't know what's going wrong. But I have a workaround:
If you're booting into a graphical environment you can disable the vmtoolsd service

# systemctl disable vmtoolsd

and add the following line to your ~/.xinitrc:

vmware-user-suid-wrapper

The ~/.xinitrc will start the vmtoolsd service then.

This solved two problems for me:
1. No more messages like you posted in my log file.
2. The virtual machine shuts down promptly (see vmtoolsd not stopping)

Last edited by BertiBoeller (2013-03-14 13:40:21)

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