Preventing univention-directory-notifier Start Limit Failures During Frequent Restarts
Problem
During certain operations the Univention Directory Notifier service will repeatly restart within a short period of time. If the number of restart attempts exceeds the configured systemd start limit, the service will no longer start and enters the start-limit-hit state.
Initially, the service restarts successfully:
2026-06-08T21:35:05.907745+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: Stopping univention-directory-notifier.service - Univention Directory Notifier Daemon...
2026-06-08T21:35:05.909123+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: univention-directory-notifier.service: Deactivated successfully.
2026-06-08T21:35:05.909338+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: Stopped univention-directory-notifier.service - Univention Directory Notifier Daemon.
2026-06-08T21:35:05.909543+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: univention-directory-notifier.service: Consumed 4.839s CPU time.
2026-06-08T21:35:05.954414+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: univention-directory-listener.service: Deactivated successfully.
2026-06-08T21:35:05.954685+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: univention-directory-listener.service: Consumed 24.482s CPU time.
2026-06-08T21:35:11.115666+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: Starting univention-directory-notifier.service - Univention Directory Notifier Daemon...
2026-06-08T21:35:12.511506+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: Started univention-directory-notifier.service - Univention Directory Notifier Daemon.
After multiple restart attempts, systemd refuses to start the service with the message Failed with result 'start-limit-hit':
2026-06-08T21:42:27.600620+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: univention-directory-notifier.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
2026-06-08T21:42:27.601172+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: univention-directory-notifier.service: Failed with result 'start-limit-hit'.
2026-06-08T21:42:27.601230+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: Failed to start univention-directory-notifier.service - Univention Directory Notifier Daemon.
2026-06-08T21:42:31.168231+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: univention-directory-listener.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 100.
2026-06-08T21:42:31.168375+02:00 ucs5primary systemd[1]: Stopped univention-directory-listener.service - Univention Directory Listener Daemon.
Root Cause
The default systemd configuration for the Univention Directory Notifier service defines the following start limits:
StartLimitBurst=50
StartLimitIntervalSec=1000
The current configuration can be inspected using:
systemctl edit univention-directory-notifier.service
Example output:
### Editing /etc/systemd/system/univention-directory-notifier.service.d/override.conf
### Anything between here and the comment below will become the new contents of the file
### Lines below this comment will be discarded
### /lib/systemd/system/univention-directory-notifier.service
# [Unit]
# Description=Univention Directory Notifier Daemon
# After=network.target slapd.service
# ConditionPathExists=/var/univention-join/joined
# StartLimitBurst=50
# StartLimitIntervalSec=1000
#
# [Service]
# EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/univention-directory-notifier
# ExecStartPre=/usr/share/univention-directory-notifier/import_translog.sh
# ExecStart=/usr/sbin/univention-directory-notifier -F $UDN_OPTS
# Restart=always
# RestartSec=10s
# StandardOutput=append:/var/log/univention/notifier.log
# StandardError=append:/var/log/univention/notifier.log
#
# [Install]
# WantedBy=multi-user.target
Once 50 restart attempts occur within the configured interval of 1000 seconds, systemd prevents any additional starts and the service fails with the following error:
Failed with result 'start-limit-hit'
Solution
Increase the value of StartLimitBurst or disable the limit entirely by setting it to 0.
There are two ways to configure this.
Option 1 – Configure the override file directly
Edit or create the following file:
/etc/systemd/system/univention-directory-notifier.service.d/override.conf
Add the following content:
[Unit]
StartLimitBurst=0
Save the file.
Option 2 – Use systemctl edit
Run:
systemctl edit univention-directory-notifier.service
Add the following configuration:
[Unit]
StartLimitBurst=0
The resulting file should look similar to this:
### Editing /etc/systemd/system/univention-directory-notifier.service.d/override.conf
### Anything between here and the comment below will become the new contents of the file
[Unit]
StartLimitBurst=0
### Lines below this comment will be discarded
Apply the Configuration
After modifying the configuration, reload the systemd manager configuration:
systemctl daemon-reload
Verify that the new setting has been applied:
systemctl show univention-directory-notifier | grep StartLimit
Recommendation
Setting:
StartLimitBurst=0
completely disables the restart limit and allows an unlimited number of service restarts.
If you prefer to keep protection against excessive restart attempts, configure a higher value instead, for example:
StartLimitBurst=100
A value of 100 provides sufficient headroom for scenarios involving approximately 74 consecutive restarts, while still maintaining protection against uncontrolled restart loops.