Well, the problem is not completely solved. The socket is not starting when the system comes up (tried it twice): Aug 04 11:33:16 barley systemd[1757]: family.socket: Failed to create listening socket (192.168.1.10:14987): Cannot assign requested address Aug 04 11:33:16 barley systemd[1]: family.socket: Failed to receive listening socket (192.168.1.10:14987): Input/output error Aug 04 11:33:16 barley systemd[1]: family.socket: Failed to listen on sockets: Input/output error Aug 04 11:33:16 barley systemd[1]: family.socket: Failed with result 'resources'. Aug 04 11:33:16 barley systemd[1]: Failed to listen on Socket to tickle to update family netboot config. I can manually start the socket after the system is up. What is the problem and how can I fix it? The full startup logs suggest (based on the sequence of lines in the log) systemd attempts to bring up the socket immediately after the br0 device (a bridge) is created, which happens very early in the startup, about 2s after restart. But I don't think there are any IP address assignments until the Debian networking stuff does ifup, which happens around 82s after restart. Theory: since br0 has no associated IP address when socket creation is attempted, the socket creation fails. If so, I need to delay socket startup until br0 has an IP4 address, but I'm not sure how to do that--or even if that is the problem. Is WantedBy=network-online.target appropriate? Substantively, there is no rush to create the socket. Another curiosity is the there are 2 devices listed for the bridge: root@barley:~# systemctl list-units '*br0*' UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION sys-devices-virtual-net-br0.device loaded active plugged /sys/devices/virtual/net/br0 sys-subsystem-net-devices-br0.device loaded active plugged /sys/subsystem/net/devices/br0 Suggestions? Ross On Thu, Aug 3, 2023 at 11:04 PM Ross Boylan <rossboylan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Here's the current configuration: > # /etc/systemd/system/family.socket > [Unit] > Description=Socket to tickle to update family netboot config > > [Install] > WantedBy=network-online.target > > [Socket] > ListenStream=192.168.1.10:14987 > # want to run a new job, aka service, for each connection. > Accept=Yes > BindToDevice=br0 > # 2s is default > TriggerLimitIntervalSec=5s >