On Sat, 1 Aug 2026 at 18:45, Felix E. Klee <[email protected]> wrote:
> Using a toplevel override, I set up email notification on service fail: > > # /etc/systemd/system/service.d/toplevel-override.conf > [Unit] > OnFailure=failure-notification@%n > > Now, every time a service fails to start, I get an email, on every > single restart attempt. This can result in many emails. In fact, if > `StartLimitBurst` is not set, I would get mailbombed by my server. > > So I also use OnFailure= to send an email, however, in my opinion there is limited value in getting an email for *each and every* service that fails. Many services are dependent on each other, or could be made to be so via their .service configuration. e.g. on a database server you arm the database service, whereas on a lamp server you could make php-fpm and apache dependent on each other and set an on-failure only on php-fpm or apache but not both (obviously there are downsides to making php dependent on apache, I know, this is a contrived example) my point is, not every service needs an on-failure alert email, and not every service needs an OnFailure=restart Others have pointed out that you could do monitoring using different frameworks also, I believe what hasn't been mentioned is cockpit [1] which can show you ongoing what the status is of your server. it may be more useful than an endless parade of emails about restarting services [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Cockpit
