[Bug 1874075] Re: rabbitmq-server startup timeouts differ between SysV and systemd

[Nicolas Bock]

On bionic the rabbitmq-server process returns with exit code 0
regardless of whether it managed to start the server or not.
Presumably this behavior is the reason for the ExecStartPost. If I
change the service to type notify then systemd notices that the
ExecStart command fails to start and the ExecStartPost is not
necessary (it is never executed then). However the end result seems to
be the same --> Let's leave the type as simple.

When I add Restart=on-failure the call to `systemctl start
rabbitmq-server` returns with an error message, but the
rabbitmq-server service is restarted every 10 seconds anyway.

I don't know whether the non-blocking of `systemctl start` will cause
issues, but the cluster now recovers as soon as the other broker is
started.

The relevant changes to the service file are:

[Service]
TimeoutStartSec=600
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1874075

Title:
  rabbitmq-server startup timeouts differ between SysV and systemd

Status in rabbitmq-server package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in rabbitmq-server source package in Xenial:
  Fix Committed
Status in rabbitmq-server source package in Bionic:
  Fix Committed
Status in rabbitmq-server source package in Eoan:
  Won't Fix
Status in rabbitmq-server source package in Focal:
  Fix Committed
Status in rabbitmq-server source package in Groovy:
  Fix Released
Status in rabbitmq-server package in Debian:
  New

Bug description:
  The startup timeouts were recently adjusted and synchronized between
  the SysV and systemd startup files.

  https://github.com/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server-release/pull/129

  The new startup files should be included in this package.

  [Impact]

  After starting the RabbitMQ server process, the startup script will
  wait for the server to start by calling `rabbitmqctl wait` and will
  time out after 10 s.

  The startup time of the server depends on how quickly the Mnesia
  database becomes available and the server will time out after
  `mnesia_table_loading_retry_timeout` ms times
  `mnesia_table_loading_retry_limit` retries. By default this wait is
  30,000 ms times 10 retries, i.e. 300 s.

  The mismatch between these two timeout values might lead to the
  startup script failing prematurely while the server is still waiting
  for the Mnesia tables.

  This change introduces variable `RABBITMQ_STARTUP_TIMEOUT` and the
  `--timeout` option into the startup script. The default value for this
  timeout is set to 10 minutes (600 seconds).

  This change also updates the systemd service file to match the timeout
  values between the two service management methods.

  [Scope]

  Upstream patch: https://github.com/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server-
  release/pull/129

  * Fix is not included in the Debian package
  * Fix is not included in any Ubuntu series

  * Groovy and Focal can apply the upstream patch as is
  * Bionic and Xenial need an additional fix in the systemd service file
    to set the `RABBITMQ_STARTUP_TIMEOUT` variable for the
    `rabbitmq-server-wait` helper script.

  [Test Case]

  In a clustered setup with two nodes, A and B.

  1. create queue on A
  2. shut down B
  3. shut down A
  4. boot B

  The broker on B will wait for A. The systemd service will wait for 10
  seconds and then fail. Boot A and the rabbitmq-server process on B
  will complete startup.

  [Regression Potential]

  This change alters the behavior of the startup scripts when the Mnesia
  database takes long to become available. This might lead to failures
  further down the service dependency chain.

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