I’m trying to move away from cron jobs, not that they don’t work, but I want to get on with the times and also learn some things.
I created two user timers (and the associated services), one for backing up my data and the second to upload to B2. I’m using two scripts I had in my cron jobs for a few years and they worked without problems. But with systemd timers both scripts fail with exit code 15 (process terminated) and I have no idea why.
I run Debian 12 Bookworm.
Here’s the output for the status of the upload service:
> systemctl --user status rclone-up.service
○ rclone-up.service - Run rclone up for b2
Loaded: loaded (/home/clmbmb/.config/systemd/user/rclone-up.service; disabled; preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: ● rclone-up.timer
Apr 11 06:10:39 tesla systemd[1698218]: Starting rclone-up.service - Run rclone up for b2...
Apr 11 06:12:18 tesla systemd[1698218]: rclone-up.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=15/TERM
Apr 11 06:12:18 tesla systemd[1698218]: rclone-up.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
Apr 11 06:12:18 tesla systemd[1698218]: Stopped rclone-up.service - Run rclone up for b2.
Apr 11 06:12:18 tesla systemd[1698218]: rclone-up.service: Consumed 12.811s CPU time.
Also, here’s the log created by rclone
while running:
2024/04/11 06:10:42 INFO : integrity.2376: Copied (new)
2024/04/11 06:10:43 INFO : hints.2376: Copied (new)
2024/04/11 06:10:43 INFO : nonce: Copied (replaced existing)
2024/04/11 06:10:47 INFO : config: Updated modification time in destination
2024/04/11 06:10:55 INFO : index.2376: Copied (new)
2024/04/11 06:11:40 INFO :
Transferred: 443.104 MiB / 2.361 GiB, 18%, 16.475 MiB/s, ETA 1m59s
Checks: 1503 / 1503, 100%
Transferred: 4 / 19, 21%
Elapsed time: 1m0.8s
Transferring:
* data/2/2328: 19% /502.259Mi, 2.904Mi/s, 2m19s
* data/2/2329: 52% /500.732Mi, 10.758Mi/s, 22s
* data/2/2330: 14% /501.598Mi, 3.150Mi/s, 2m15s
* data/2/2331: 0% /500.090Mi, 0/s, -
2024/04/11 06:12:18 INFO : Signal received: terminated
Where should I look to get some more information about what’s going on? Why would the service be terminated like that?
LE:
Setting TimeoutSec=infinity
inside the [Service]
section of the unit file seems to help. Not 100% if it’s a good idea, but I’ll experiment with it.
Is it on the horizon for cron to be deprecated?
I don’t think so, but I wanted to try systemd timers.
Sure, not trying to second guess you. What do you think of them so far? Is it worth the effort to learn them?
Yes, for sure. Timers are more versatile than what cron jobs can do.