A timesyncd failure and systemd's lack of debugability
Let&#x27;s carefully step around the whole distraction that is systemd. Instead:<p>&gt; <i>The real problem here is that it is impossible to diagnose or debug this situation. Simply to get this far I had to read the systemd source code (to find the code in timesyncd that printed this specific error message) and then search through 25,000 lines of strace output. And I still don&#x27;t know what the problem is or how to fix it.</i><p>This seems to be really common practice in modern software development, and it sucks.<p>There&#x27;s a rush to rewrite old software and to match some or most of that software&#x27;s feature set, enough to get people to adopt it, but useful error messages and other diagnostics represent a lot of extra work and so nobody bothers.<p>Not enough programmers are spending time as systems administrators, trying to keep plates spinning, and so they aren&#x27;t learning to appreciate the value of software that helps you troubleshoot it when something goes wrong. It&#x27;s turning into the long-running conflict between mechanics and automotive engineers, where mechanics are tired of things like, &quot;To replace [simple part that needs to be replaced every 5 years]: begin unbolting the entire front of the car. The front of the car uses 23 similar, but different, types of fasteners; keep track of them.&quot;<p>It needs to be a rule that if somebody&#x27;s going to rewrite some software, they&#x27;ve got to match or improve the logging and error handling in it. Error handling needs to start getting the kind of attention and shaming for bad behavior that bottom-barrel security practices gets.