Show proper error message when syntax in 'RequiredBy=' is wrong

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#13,619 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
linux
Domain
operating-systems

Research direction

Reproduce the issue with the provided .service file and systemd-analyze verify automount.service, focusing on dependency handling for the [Unit] section's Before= entry. Done means the invalid pve-guests dependency produces a specific diagnostic rather than Unknown error -22, or that the documented extension behavior is clarified.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

needs-better-log-message pid1

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
In a .service file under the [Unit] section when using the 'Before=' option and forgetting to specify the '.service' ending for services listed there, an 'Unknown Error 22' is thrown when analyzing the service file or using the service.

My specific example

[Unit]
Description=Automount Encrypted Dataset
Before=pve-guests

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStartPre=/bin/true
ExecStart=/bin/true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

When booting the system with this service enabled or analyzing the file via "systemd-analyze verify automount.service" the following unspecific error appears.
Failed to add dependency on pve-guests, ignoring: Unknown error -22

Took me quite some time to find my mistake since the error message is not very specific about the problem.

Describe the solution you'd like
In case this is a syntax error in systemd, the file should not be possible to load. In case this syntax is allowed but a unit with this name could not be found, the error should be something like:
Failed to add dependency on pve-guests, ignoring: Error: Unit pve-guests doesn't exist

Describe alternatives you've considered
Automatically assume '.service' extension when user didn't specify an extension.

Dominant language
C
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