Chapter 39. Systemd network targets and services

The network target indicates that the network management stack has been started, and the network-online target is to actively wait until the network is up and a usable network connection is available.

Systemd maintains the network and network-online target units. The special units such as NetworkManager-wait-online.service, have WantedBy=network-online.target and Before=network-online.target parameters. If enabled, these units get started with network-online.target and delay the target to be reached until some form of network connectivity is established. They delay the network-online target until the network is connected.

The network-online target starts a service, which adds substantial delays to further execution. Systemd automatically adds dependencies with Wants and After parameters for this target unit to all the System V (SysV) init script service units with a Linux Standard Base (LSB) header referring to the $network facility. The LSB header is metadata for init scripts. You can use it to specify dependencies. This is similar to the systemd target.

The network target does not significantly delay the execution of the boot process. Reaching the network target means that the service that is responsible for setting up the network has started. However, it does not mean that a network device was configured. This target is important during the shutdown of the system. For example, if you have a service that was ordered after the network target during bootup, then this dependency is reversed during the shutdown. The network does not get disconnected until your service has been stopped. All mount units for remote network file systems automatically start the network-online target unit and order themselves after it.

The NetworkManager-wait-online service delays reaching the network-online target until NetworkManager reports that the startup is complete.

During boot, NetworkManager activates all profiles with the connection.autoconnect parameter set to yes. However, the activation of profiles is not complete as long as NetworkManager profiles are in an activating state. If activation fails, NetworkManager retries the activation depending on the value of the connection.autoconnect-retries.

When a device reaches the activated state depends on its configuration. For example, if a profiles contains both IPv4 and IPv6 configuration, by default, NetworkManager considers the device as fully activated when only one of the Address families is ready. The ipv4.may-fail and ipv6.may-fail parameters in a connection profile control this behavior.

For Ethernet devices, NetworkManager waits for the carrier with a timeout. Consequently, if the Ethernet cable is not connected, this can further delay NetworkManager-wait-online.service.

When the startup completes, either all profiles are in a disconnected state or are successfully activated. You can configure profiles to auto-connect. The following are a few examples of parameters that set timeouts or define when the connection is considered active:

For further details, see the nm-settings(5), systemd.special(7), NetworkManager-wait-online.service(8) man pages on your system.

RHEL installs systemd service files in the /usr/lib/systemd/system/ directory. You can create a drop-in snippet in /etc/systemd/system/<service_name>.service.d/ to start a service after the network is online.

This snippet’s settings override any conflicting settings in the original service file.