What is the effect of Changing DefaultTimeoutStopSec

[anishmonachan]

Hello,

I've an recurring issue with my linux system. The reboot hangs with a message "

A stop job is running for a xserver startup

".
Sometimes the message appears for different services as well. I'm wondering how would one start investigation on this issue.
I found out that adjusting the default value of

DefaultTimeoutStopSec

in the

/etc/systemd/system.conf file

is a solution.

I'm a bit afraid to adjust this default value. Some questions in mind are,
is that a good solution?
how it would affect OS?
does it lead to the unstability of the OS?

Also, I'm wondering if there a better approach to resolve this issue?

 

[f33dm3bits]

systemd-system.conf

DefaultTimeoutStartSec=, DefaultTimeoutStopSec=, DefaultTimeoutAbortSec=, DefaultRestartSec=
Configures the default timeouts for starting, stopping and aborting of units, as well as the default time to sleep between automatic restarts of units, as configured per-unit in TimeoutStartSec=, TimeoutStopSec=, TimeoutAbortSec= and RestartSec= (for services, see systemd.service(5) for details on the per-unit settings). Disabled by default, when service with Type=oneshot is used. For non-service units, DefaultTimeoutStartSec= sets the default TimeoutSec= value. DefaultTimeoutStartSec= and DefaultTimeoutStopSec= default to 90s. DefaultTimeoutAbortSec= is not set by default so that all units fall back to TimeoutStopSec=. DefaultRestartSec= defaults to 100ms.

It's the default time-out for a stop job, the better option would probably be to figure out why xserver is taking so long to stop. Are we talking X11 or and service called xserver?

 

[anishmonachan]

We're talking about the xserver. It's not always the xserver. It can be some other services too. Like openvpn or x11vnc.

 

[f33dm3bits]

You would start by looking in systemd-journal or syslog to see why those specific services take so long to stop, but change the value of DefaultTimeoutStopSec can't hurt your system because it's just the default time-out for stop jobs and doesn't effect how the rest of the system runs just during shutdown.