Package: syncthing Version: 1.29.5~ds1-3 Severity: important Dear Maintainer,
Whenever I reboot my Debian system and login, syncthing fails to start automatically. I usually don't notice until a few days later when I notice things haven't been syncing, then I have to remember that I rebooted recently and start it manually. Once started manually, it stays running until the next reboot. After failing to start automatically, `systemctl --user status syncthing` says: syncthing.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 4. syncthing.service: Start request repeated too quickly. syncthing.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'. Failed to start syncthing.service - Syncthing - Open Source Continuous File Synchronization. Looking a little more deeply with `journalctl --user -t syncthing --boot`, I see messages like this: WARNING: Starting API/GUI: listen tcp 127.0.0.1:8384: bind: address already in use WARNING: Starting API/GUI: listen tcp 127.0.0.1:8384: bind: address already in use WARNING: Starting API/GUI: listen tcp 127.0.0.1:8384: bind: address already in use WARNING: Starting API/GUI: listen tcp 127.0.0.1:8384: bind: address already in use WARNING: Starting API/GUI: listen tcp 127.0.0.1:8384: bind: address already in use WARNING: Failed starting API: listen tcp 127.0.0.1:8384: bind: address already in use Evidently syncthing can't bind te ports it needs to listen on, it tries several times and fails, then systemd restarts it, and after a few restarts systemd also marks the service as failed. This was very puzzling to me because I'd just rebooted - what else could possibly be listening on the syncthing ports? Today I decided to go one step further, and check the system-wide journal too: INFO: syncthing v1.29.5 "Gold Grasshopper" (go1.24.9 linux-amd64) debian@debian 2025-11-29 20:48:58 UTC INFO: Generating ECDSA key and certificate for syncthing... INFO: Default folder created and/or linked to new config INFO: Default config saved. Edit /run/gdm3/home/gdm- greeter/.local/state/syncthing/config.xml to taste (with Syncthing stopped) or use the GUI Apparently what's happening is that after the system boots, the greeter runs under the `gdm3` user, which is apparently counted as a user session, so per- user units like syncthing are started and bind the relevant ports. When I login, that starts a *new* user session, and *another* copy of syncthing, which fails to start because the ports are already bound. Eventually (I'm not sure how) gdm3's copy of syncthing gives up, or is stopped, so days later when I notice the problem I can start syncthing and it works perfectly. It would be good if somehow syncthing could be configured to *not* start up for system users like gdm3. -- System Information: Debian Release: forky/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 6.18.5+deb14-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT) Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_AU:en Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) LSM: AppArmor: enabled Versions of packages syncthing depends on: ii init-system-helpers 1.69 ii libc6 2.42-11+b1 Versions of packages syncthing recommends: ii xdg-utils 1.2.1-2 syncthing suggests no packages. -- no debconf information
