[systemd-devel] Best way to configure longer start timeout for .device units?

[Michal Sekletar]

Hi,

On big setups (read: a lot of multipathed disks), probing and
assembling storage may take significant amount of time. However, by
default systemd waits only 90s (DefaultTimeoutStartSec) for
"top-level" device unit to show up, i.e. one that is referenced in
/etc/fstab.

One possible solution is to change JobTimeout for device unit by
adding x-systemd.device-timeout= option to fstab entries. This is
kinda ugly.

Another option is to bump value of DefaultTimeoutStartSec, since that
is what systemd uses as default timeout for device's unit start job.
However, this has possible negative effect on all other units as well,
e.g. service Exec* timeouts will be affected by this change.

I am looking for elegant solution that doesn't involve rewriting
automation scripts that manage /etc/fstab.

Is there any other way how to configure the timeout? Can't we
introduce new timeout value specifically for device units?

Any advice is much appreciated, thanks.

Michal