Arch Linux

xerxes_

Member

Registered: 2018-04-29

Posts: 979

[Solved] After update systemd start timers at boot, delaying boot

Recently, after systemd update (to version around 258.1 or 258.2), when system boots, systemd force to start overdued tasks (timers), which slow down system boot (logrotate.timer and man-db.timer are 2 most heavy which start logrotate.service and man-db.service). That wasn't in previous systemd versions. How to delay timers to run them after system boots to the end?

Is this reasonable to start that timers everyday, not just after system update (man-db.timer) and every three days or once a week (logrotate.timer)?

Last edited by xerxes_ (2025-11-26 21:50:59)

seth

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From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 71,519

Re: [Solved] After update systemd start timers at boot, delaying boot

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/Timers
You could mask them, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd#Using_units or edit them, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd#Drop-in_files (timer, not the service!)

Is this reasonable to start that timers everyday

mandb should™ have gotten substantially leaner after https://gitlab.com/man-db/man-db/-/comm … ab7c5e9b55 and https://gitlab.com/man-db/man-db/-/comm … 2edc0569a6 but you could frankly just introduce an alpm hook that operates on /usr/share/man etc. and schedule a single update after that.

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augofeta

Member

Registered: 2025-07-29

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] After update systemd start timers at boot, delaying boot

xerxes_, it is a bug in systemd 258.2, already fixed for 259, see https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/39739

xerxes_

Member

Registered: 2018-04-29

Posts: 979

Re: [Solved] After update systemd start timers at boot, delaying boot

I masked man-db.timer (and unmask it after system update, timer do it's job, then mask it again), edited and changed logrotate.timer from daily to weekly (maybe I will change it to monthly?).

I'm waiting for new systemd version with fixed this bug. I found info that version 259 may be on spring.

Last edited by xerxes_ (2025-11-26 21:52:54)