[systemd-devel] Doc issue: does BindsTo wait for a service to become active?

[Christopher Hunt]

Howdy,

I’m looking for some clarification on BindsTo as I’m wondering if there’s some clarification required in the doc (1). I think I’m perhaps misinterpreting what the doc is referring to as “active" i.e:

"When used in conjunction with After= on the same unit the behaviour of BindsTo= is even stronger. In this case, the unit bound to strictly has to be in active state for this unit to also be in active state."

The key word here is “active” and perhaps mistakenly, interpret the above that a dependent service will have its starting deferred. To explain:

Given a service A set up as a notification service i.e.:

	Type=notify
	NotifyAccess=all

…and this service takes a few seconds to signal that it is active via:

	systemd-notify —ready

…and we have service B binding to it:

	After=A.service
	BindsTo=A.service

I see a Job B.service/start failed with result ‘dependency’ on startup.

Shouldn’t systemd cause the start of B to wait until the systemd-notify conveys that A is ready i.e. active? I’d like to offer updating the doc upon clarification.

Thanks.

Kind regards,
Christopher

(1) https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd.unit.html

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