Unable to get synthing started by systemd

Support
1

Hello,

I’ve already used syncthing with systemd without problems. But I’ve bought a new computer and decided to use home directory encryption so I need to start synthing as user service after login. And I’am unable to do it. I’ve tried

systemctl --user enable syncthing.service

as mentioned in syncthing documentation. It successfully created link in ~/.config/systemd/user/default.target.wants. I can run sycthing manually with systemctl start command. But it never starts automatically.

After some inspection I found, that, despite of theese links, syncthing is missing from default.target dependencies when I try to list them with list-dependencies systemctl command. Which is the problem, probably. I don’t know how to fix it hovever.

What I’am doing wrong? Besides lack of experience with systemd :wink:

2

What does systemctl --user status syncthing.service say? And please excuse the question, I am asking everything that comes to mind and wasn’t mentioned explicitly: You did use --user when using list-dependencies, right? Also if the status logs are filled with the manual start, you can check logs from after login with journalctl --user -u syncthing.

3 
systemctl --user status syncthing.service
● syncthing.service - Syncthing - Open Source Continuous File Synchronization
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/syncthing.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Thu 2017-12-07 21:27:04 CET; 23min ago
     Docs: man:syncthing(1)
 Main PID: 9187 (syncthing)
   CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/syncthing.service
           └─9187 /usr/bin/syncthing -no-browser -no-restart -logflags=0


pro 07 21:28:20 infisky syncthing[9187]: [SNEDS] INFO: Completed initial scan of readwrite folder "gradle data" (gradle-data)
pro 07 21:28:36 infisky syncthing[9187]: [SNEDS] INFO: Completed initial scan of readwrite folder Textury
pro 07 21:30:19 infisky syncthing[9187]: [SNEDS] INFO: Completed initial scan of readwrite folder "home-p2" (s2wuq-akcth)
pro 07 21:30:29 infisky syncthing[9187]: [SNEDS] INFO: Established secure connection to 2WI2RJS-L3VH6QX-6Z7QBBI-PZ5UZFG-4GXZYOO-ZCTHN5S-PXEHEFC-FMEEUQF at 192.168.1.199:55856-192.168.1.200:22000 (tcp-client) (TL
pro 07 21:30:29 infisky syncthing[9187]: [SNEDS] INFO: Device 2WI2RJS-L3VH6QX-6Z7QBBI-PZ5UZFG-4GXZYOO-ZCTHN5S-PXEHEFC-FMEEUQF client is "syncthing v0.14.40" named "infime"
pro 07 21:30:43 infisky syncthing[9187]: [SNEDS] INFO: Connected to already connected device 2WI2RJS-L3VH6QX-6Z7QBBI-PZ5UZFG-4GXZYOO-ZCTHN5S-PXEHEFC-FMEEUQF (existing: 192.168.1.199:55856-192.168.1.200:22000/tcp
pro 07 21:32:07 infisky syncthing[9187]: [SNEDS] INFO: Completed initial scan of readwrite folder Modely
pro 07 21:32:47 infisky syncthing[9187]: [SNEDS] INFO: kcp://0.0.0.0:22020 detected NAT type: Port restricted NAT
pro 07 21:32:47 infisky syncthing[9187]: [SNEDS] INFO: kcp://0.0.0.0:22020 resolved external address kcp://94.230.144.43:41934 (via stun.schlund.de:3478)
pro 07 21:35:56 infisky syncthing[9187]: [SNEDS] INFO: Completed initial scan of readwrite folder Documents

I’ve started syncthing manually. And yes, I’am using --user switch everywhere. Journalctl shows nothing:

journalctl --user -u syncthing
No journal files were found.
-- No entries --
4

Weird that the -u parameter doesn’t work with --user, no idea why. But the service is enabled, so it should just work. You can have a look at just journalctl --user, but I don’t know what to look for.

5

Note that in general this is supposed to work. In fact, here on my machine (Arch Linux) it works fine:

journalctl --user -fu syncthing
-- Logs begin at Tue 2017-06-06 19:32:02 CEST. --
Dez 07 22:30:14 martchus-arch syncthing[626]: [HP76R] INFO: Completed initial scan of readwrite folder music
...

However, I remember someone mentioning the same problem (no log for --user services) on IRC. Not sure what the solution was.

Stupid question, but did you execute all commands with the correct user? For example, if you accidentally call systemctl --user enable syncthing.service as root, the service will not be enabled for your regular user.

Which dependencies are missing according to systemctl list-dependencies --user syncthing?

6

I’am not running it as root. Dependencies are:

$systemctl list-dependencies --user syncthing
syncthing.service
● ├─-.slice
● ├─syncthing-inotify.service
● └─basic.target
●   ├─paths.target
●   ├─sockets.target
●   │ └─dbus.socket
●   └─timers.target

And I think, that I have the neccessary systemd links:

disnel@infisky:~/.config/systemd/user/default.target.wants$ ll
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 disnel disnel 4096 pro  6 20:25 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 disnel disnel 4096 pro  6 20:21 ../
lrwxrwxrwx 1 disnel disnel   47 pro  6 20:25 syncthing-inotify.service -> /usr/lib/systemd/user/syncthing-inotify.service
lrwxrwxrwx 1 disnel disnel   39 pro  6 20:25 syncthing.service -> /usr/lib/systemd/user/syncthing.service

I think, that the problem is missing dependency here:

disnel@infisky:~$ systemctl --user list-dependencies default.target
default.target
● └─basic.target
●   ├─paths.target
●   ├─sockets.target
●   │ └─dbus.socket
●   └─timers.target

But it should be added with mentioned links, right?

7

The problem was home folder encryption. I removed it, due to another problem (thread about awfully slow initial scan) and it started working…