Force rc.local to wait for network

[berto]

I am trying to force a script wait for network readiness, following the suggestions @DBMandrake provided here:

OSMC's December update is here

rc.local is not synchronised to the network going up in any way - on my systems rc.local has always run before the network is up. It waits until the network manager starts, but not for the network to actually go up. If you want to run services after the network is up your best option is to enable “wait for network” in the networking GUI, then create a systemd service to run your scripts, and specify: After=network-online.target Wants=network-online.target In the [Unit] section of the service…

My first attempt uses the (simpler looking) approach to make the whole rc.local launch wait for network. Unfortunately, it did not work. Here is what I did:

1. created a directory rc.local.service.d, and confirmed it has the same permissions as all the other directories here (rwxr-xr-x root root).
   

   

2. created a local.conf file inside the new directory. The permissions here seem to match those on local.conf in other directories, like bluetooth.service.d (rw-r–r-- root root), so I think this is OK.

3. in local.conf, I added only the lines specified:
   

4. commented out the sleep 10 delay I had previously inserted into rc.local as a first workaround.

5. rebooted

6. the network problems came back

   Error while loading service
   Unable to find the server at api.twilio.com

I do not know how to confirm for certain, but it seems to me that rc.local did not wait for the network to be ready? The reasons I think this are:

• if I manually run rc.local at this point (sudo /etc/rc.local), it starts correctly. I assume this is because by now the network is up.
• if I add back sleep 10 to rc.local, everythink works correctly again on reboot.

Am I doing something wrong with the network-online.target approach?

[DBMandrake]

Did you also enable wait for network in the networking settings in My OSMC ?

[berto]

As far as I know, yes. I believe I have always used OSMC with that option enabled, but admittedly I was working from CLI and did not explicitly check. Is there a way to check using SSH? Otherwise I will double-check in GUI later.

[DBMandrake]

sudo systemctl status connman-wait-for-network.service

The service should be enabled.

BTW I have not tried the modifications to rc.local.service that I suggested but I see no reason why it shouldn’t work.

[berto]

Confirmed wait for network is enabled:

[berto]

@DBMandrake I spent some time today reading the documentation on systemd. I think that to be consistent with the corresponding service, the filename needs to be rc-local.service.d instead of rc.local.service.d (i.e. dash instead of dot).

Once I made the change, I was able to remove the artificial sleep statement in rc.local and my process still worked fine - presumably waiting for network before proceeding.

I can also see that rc-local.service correctly recognizes the new dependencies:

osmc@osmc:/etc/systemd/system$ systemctl show rc-local.service | grep network Wants=network-online.target system.slice After=network.target network-online.target systemd-journald.socket basic.target

Thanks again! Next I’ll look into defining a whole new service just for my script, removing it from rc.local altogether.

[DBMandrake]

@berto

I spent some time today reading the documentation on systemd. I think that to be consistent with the corresponding service, the filename needs to be rc-local.service.d instead of rc.local.service.d (i.e. dash instead of dot).

Interesting find! I had not notice this before but both names are present, however one is a symlink:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 633 Nov 27 06:30 rc-local.service
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  16 Nov 27 06:31 rc.local.service -> rc-local.service

Apparently because rc-local.service is the real service name, this is the one that you must override with the drop in.