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systemd timers with RunVouch

A timer that fires a failing service shows up in systemctl --failed and nowhere else. A timer that never fires (unit disabled, machine asleep, Persistent missing) shows up nowhere at all.

How it runs on systemd timers

The timer starts a .service; wrap that service's ExecStart. Works for system units and systemctl --user units.

Store the key

Put RUNVOUCH_KEY=rv_... in a file with mode 600 and reference it with EnvironmentFile=; do not put the key in the unit file itself, which is world-readable.

Wrap the job

# ~/.config/systemd/user/nightly-report.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
EnvironmentFile=%h/.config/runvouch.env
ExecStart=%h/.local/bin/rv run nightly-report --evidence-file %h/out/report.html -- %h/bin/report.sh

# ~/.config/systemd/user/nightly-report.timer
[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* 02:00
Persistent=true
[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

rv fails open: if RunVouch is unreachable the job still runs and you get one warning line.

Register the cadence and caps

rv agent nightly-report --cadence 24h --grace 30m --max-runtime 1h --evidence --cap-run-cost 2

Register the agent once, from anywhere with the key. Cadence is what turns a schedule that stopped into an alert; --evidence makes a run without evidence a failure; the caps pause the agent when it overspends.

What goes silent on systemd timers

• Without Persistent=true a timer that was due while the machine was off is simply skipped.
• OnFailure= can start a notifier unit, but only on non-zero exit; a script that exits 0 with no output is never a failure to systemd.
• User timers stop when the user session ends unless loginctl enable-linger is set; MISSED tells you the same evening, not when you next log in.

What RunVouch detects

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