systemd specifies a special passive target unit 'network-pre.target' which may be pulled in by services that want to run before any network interface is brought up or configured. Correspondingly, network management services such as iwd and ead should specify After=network-pre.target to ensure a proper ordering with respect to this special target. For more information on network-pre.target, see systemd.special(7). Two examples to explain the rationale of this change: 1. On one of our embedded systems running iwd, a oneshot service is run on startup to configure - among other things - the MAC address of the wireless network interface based on some data in an EEPROM. Following the systemd documentation, the oneshot service specifies: Before=network-pre.target Wants=network-pre.target ... to ensure that it is run before any network management software starts. In practice, before this change, iwd was starting up and connecting to an AP before the service had finished. iwd would then get kicked off by the AP when the MAC address got changed. By specifying After=network-pre.target, systemd will take care to avoid this situation. 2. An administrator may wish to use network-pre.target to ensure firewall rules are applied before any network management software is started. This use-case is described in the systemd documentation[1]. Since iwd can be used for IP configuration, it should also respect the After=network-pre.target convention. Note that network-pre.target is a passive unit that is only pulled in if another unit specifies e.g. Wants=network-pre.target. If no such unit exists, this change will have no effect on the order in which systemd starts iwd or ead. [1] https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/NetworkTarget/ --- src/iwd.service.in | 1 + wired/ead.service.in | 1 + 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+) diff --git a/src/iwd.service.in b/src/iwd.service.in index 77819eaf..96e4abac 100644 --- a/src/iwd.service.in +++ b/src/iwd.service.in @@ -1,5 +1,6 @@ [Unit] Description=Wireless service +After=network-pre.target Before=network.target Wants=network.target diff --git a/wired/ead.service.in b/wired/ead.service.in index 387fdb68..6403c9e4 100644 --- a/wired/ead.service.in +++ b/wired/ead.service.in @@ -1,5 +1,6 @@ [Unit] Description=Ethernet service +After=network-pre.target Before=network.target Wants=network.target -- 2.29.2