A start job is running for wait for network to be configured. Ubuntu server 17.10

Question

i just installed ubuntu server on my laptop and everything works fine except for the fact that at boot if the laptop is not connected to ethernet or in range of my wi-fi i get this message "A start job is running for wait for network to be configured" that stays for about 2 minutes. I looked up online for solutions and i tried to:

Disable network manager
Edit timeout settings in /etc/systemd/system.conf
Disable systemd.networkd-wait-online.service

None of these solutions worked for me. Any possible fixes?

Those are the fixes. After each change, did you reload NM/systemd? They only read their config files at start. — user535733, Nov 02 '17 at 17:55
Really obscure problem! I fixed it using the @user914826's answer as well, but using the file /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml. — aderchox, Nov 20 '21 at 15:29
@aderchox what should I do in the file /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml — Bennison J, Oct 06 '23 at 14:02
I solved this by NOT having optional: true in my 00-installer-config.yaml due to bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/2036358 - but I still have ignore-carrier: true. — activout.se, Nov 19 '23 at 13:41
Noting for the record that this is still broken as of jammy 22.04.4. I have builtin ethernet on my motherboard and a Mellanox MCX311A NIC. Was able to fix this by adding optional: true to my 00-installer-config.yaml under the entry for my motherboard's ethernet device id. — sobutterysosmooth, Mar 07 '24 at 09:40

score 177 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 26 '24 at 09:23

177

Don't mask or disable the systemd service.

Edit /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml and add optional: true to any devices that may not always be available.

sudo netplan apply

NOTE: setting all interfaces as optional: true will not work. It will still default to waiting for 120 seconds. Do not mark the ones required for boot (e.g. the one connected to your Wifi or Ethernet network).

edited Jan 26 '24 at 09:23

William

103

answered Jan 17 '19 at 05:35

user914826

1,787

1

In my case it only worked after setting all interfaces to optional: true – duli Mar 04 '19 at 14:11
9

In what way is this superior to disabling the systemd service? – Andreas Hartmann Aug 16 '19 at 13:42
4

For me with Ubuntu 18.04 on Vmware, the corresponding file was /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml; adding optional: true & reboot worked! Related thread: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1090631/start-job-is-running-for-wait-for-network-to-be-configured-ubuntu-server-18-04. Related info on netplan: https://www.linux.com/learn/intro-to-linux/2018/9/how-use-netplan-network-configuration-tool-linux (Configuring DHCP) – Snidhi Sofpro Aug 21 '19 at 07:29
Thisx worked for me with Ubuntu 18.04.03 LTS (Desktop) where I have disabled NetworkManager and set up networkd with netplan, ans set up br0 for kdvm/qenu virtualisation and dns caching with dnsmaquerade. Newer did not find what goes wrong with my settings, but booys take over 2 minutes without optional: true -setting. With that setting boot is normal and so is functionality also with network. – Reijo Korhonen Sep 09 '19 at 21:26
3

This worked, but I don't understand why. The "optional: true" setting indicates that the device is "not required for booting". But what if it is? Isn't this going to create other issues when another step during the boot process needs an internet connection for example? I only have 1 interface (eth0, connected to the internet) which should always be present. Why would it need 2 minutes to "become available"? What is it waiting for? – mae Apr 15 '20 at 11:22
4

it's not workin for me in ubuntu 20.04 in virtualbox – Jastria Rahmat Aug 31 '20 at 01:27
@mae I'm just guessing, but perhaps the DHCP client was waiting for a DHCP Offer from the DHCP server, and for some reasons never received one, and reverted to a previously-working setting. In the background, the DHCP client actually will retry after some time (because DHCP Offers do expire) – pepoluan Nov 19 '20 at 07:08
13

20.04 ubuntu server, I edited the file called /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml – user128048 Oct 28 '21 at 07:27
1

This does not work for me. I still have to endure 3 min delay each boot. Considering switching to another distro. – Calmarius Dec 24 '23 at 11:15
Clarifying - only mark the unused interfaces as optional: true. I initially marked them all as optional and only AFTER I removed optional: true from my main ethernet/network interface did it skip the Wait for Network 120 second step in the boot. – William Jan 23 '24 at 17:23

score 87 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 19 '18 at 02:50

87

Use

systemctl disable systemd-networkd-wait-online.service

to disable the wait-online service to prevent the system from waiting on a network connection, and use

systemctl mask systemd-networkd-wait-online.service

to prevent the service from starting if requested by another service (the service is symlinked to /dev/null).

edited Apr 19 '18 at 02:50

fosslinux

3,831

answered Nov 23 '17 at 12:33

Mr.Ecco

903

1

What means masking in this context?. – Jaime Hablutzel Mar 27 '18 at 03:37
1

It worked. :) Can you please describe what we have done here? I am just curious. – Saurin Dashadia Apr 14 '18 at 05:22
6

@SD @jaime-hablutzel See https://askubuntu.com/a/816378/445084 for an explanation of systemctl mask.
Long story short: masking a service redirects it to /dev/null, preventing it from being re-enabled in the case that it is required by another service.
– timelmer Apr 18 '18 at 22:43
1

I was following advice elsewhere to just disable the service, but it kept getting re-enabled. Masking it (and NetworkManager-wait-online.service) seems to have done the trick. – Ketil Malde Feb 19 '20 at 11:46
You saved my life. It worked – igorkf May 29 '20 at 13:44
Is this at least not worse than the selected answer which edits some config file? – Damn Vegetables Aug 02 '22 at 22:38
This is a solution that works on Ubuntu 22.04. – Francesco Galgani Oct 15 '23 at 09:58

score 24 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 19 '18 at 09:44

24

This means systemd-networkd-wait-online.service is hanging. There's a few known bugs with it. Check what services want network-online.target with:

systemctl show -p WantedBy network-online.target

You can disable those services if you want. Otherwise, you may have to mask the service as Mr.Ecco indicated.

edited Sep 19 '18 at 09:44

Afriza N. Arief

717

answered Mar 05 '18 at 18:01

Dessa Simpson

687
7
19

Ingo · Answer 4 · 2020-11-27T09:48:26.890

Masking systemd-networkd-wait-online.service, as suggested in other answers, may help in simple setups but it does not fix the problem. If you mask the service then all other services depending on it will also fail. That means, all services needed to wait until the network is online will fail.

I run into this problem because I use a dynamic fail-over setup for my devices with bonding the wired (e.g. enp9s0) and wireless (e.g. wlp12s0) interface that are used as slaves for the main interface bond0. Exactly the same situation do you have if you use a bridge (br0 with slave interfaces). Only the main interfaces bond0 or br0 will get online but not the slaves so systemd-networkd-wait-online.service will fail on the slaves.

The solution to this problem is to modify the service and ignore the interfaces that are slaves and does not signal to be online. You will find with:

~$ sudo systemctl cat systemd-networkd-wait-online.service | grep --after-context=3 '\[Service\]'
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/lib/systemd/systemd-networkd-wait-online
RemainAfterExit=yes

The program systemd-networkd-wait-online has a parameter to ignore specific interfaces. Check with /lib/systemd/systemd-networkd-wait-online --help. So I make a drop in file to modify the service and ignore the slave interfaces:

~$ sudo systemctl edit systemd-networkd-wait-online.service

In the empty editor insert these statements, of course with your interface names, save them an quit the editor:

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/lib/systemd/systemd-networkd-wait-online --ignore=enp9s0 --ignore=wlp12s0 --quiet

The empty ExecStart= is important because it disables the "old" command. You can check for more than one interface (look at the help).

isnt this same end result as using optional: true in netplan config? — yurtesen, May 11 '20 at 21:24
If the file doesn't exist use --force. systemctl edit --force systememd-networkd-wait-online.service — linux64kb, May 17 '20 at 08:56
@linux64kb The option --force is not needed. The drop in file is always created. That's the reason why the editor is empty. The option does not have any impact. — Ingo, May 17 '20 at 09:29
I can say that the command solved my problem, there were no other issues and I never repair a system that just works fine. Thanks for the advice though. — linux64kb, Sep 05 '20 at 18:30

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 04 '20 at 05:57

This may not work for everyone, but it worked for me in Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04.

I use SLAAC for IPv6 IP addresses, but I had dhcp6: yes in my /etc/netplan/01.netplan.yaml file and experienced the 2-minute delay on boot. I changed it to dhcp6: no and the 2-minute wait disappeared, but I still get my SLAAC IP address.

I don't completely understand why. Someone in the future may edit this answer to explain (or confirm?). I believe Netplan is trying to use DHCPv6 to get the IPv6 address and it takes a long time (2 minutes?) to fail before giving up.

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 02 '20 at 13:28

This is an oldie that appears to be resurfacing in 20.10.

Along the same lines as the previous answer, what worked here is adding link-local: [ ] to every interface in /etc/netplan/*.yaml. This overrides the default value of [ ipv6 ] (see man 5 netplan).

Then apply the change (sudo netplan apply), and networkctl -a should show the state of the interfaces as configured rather than configuring. Also, systemctl start systemd-networkd-wait-online returns immediately with success.

This is on a system with disabled IPv6 stack (ipv6.disable_ipv6=1 on the kernel commandline), so the bug appears to be that systemd-networkd-wait-online is waiting in vain for a link-local IPv6 interface to be configured.

fwiw I tried setting link-local: [ ] as well as dhcpv6: false for all my interfaces, and this did not work for me. I suppose that is not enough if I do not also disable IPv6 elsewhere. — algal, Mar 25 '21 at 19:08

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 14 '21 at 22:56

I have a machine with 5 Ethernet ports and besides the first one I used the other four sporadically.

Assigned static IPs to the ones I used more often and added "optional: true" on all others. The boot up does not hang and wait only 2~3 seconds for configuring network services.

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 01 '23 at 16:38

in my case the offending service were related to ISCSI, and I solved it masking the services as follows:

systemctl mask open-iscsi.service iscsid.service iscsid.socket

This solution works if you don't need to use the services, otherwise you need a working configuration for your ISCSI

A start job is running for wait for network to be configured. Ubuntu server 17.10

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