Build a Restart Loop Timeline

A service keeps restarting and you need to separate the first application failure from later supervisor retries.

Command

journalctl -u app-worker -b --no-pager -o short-iso | grep -E 'Started|Failed|Scheduled restart|Main process exited'

Before you run this

System impact: Read-only. Can create load on large logs, directories, filesystems, or process tables.

When not to use it: Do not use this as the only diagnosis; read the adjacent app log lines around the first failure.

Expected output

Timestamped service lifecycle lines showing starts, main-process exits, failed results, and scheduled restarts.

System impact

Read-only, can be slow. Nothing changes. The pipeline prints a compact timeline of start, failure, and restart-counter lines.

Scope this to the smallest useful path or service on busy systems.

Recovery / rollback: no state is changed.

When to use it

Use when Restart=on-failure is hiding the first useful failure under repeated retries.

When not to use it

Do not use this as the only diagnosis; read the adjacent app log lines around the first failure.

Watch this command run

Command transcript

This sanitized transcript shows the commands and output shape without exposing host details.

demo@lab:~$

$ journalctl -u app-worker -b --no-pager -o short-iso

2026-06-25T14:20:58-05:00 vps systemd[1]: Started app-worker.service - Background job worker.
2026-06-25T14:20:58-05:00 vps worker[2081]: loading /etc/app/worker.env
2026-06-25T14:20:58-05:00 vps worker[2081]: ERROR redis connection refused at localhost:6379
2026-06-25T14:20:59-05:00 vps systemd[1]: app-worker.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
2026-06-25T14:21:04-05:00 vps systemd[1]: app-worker.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 4.
2026-06-25T14:22:17-05:00 vps systemd[1]: Started app-worker.service - Background job worker.
2026-06-25T14:22:17-05:00 vps systemd[2144]: app-worker.service: Failed to determine user credentials: No such process
2026-06-25T14:22:17-05:00 vps systemd[2144]: app-worker.service: Failed at step USER spawning /srv/app/bin/worker: No such process
2026-06-25T14:22:17-05:00 vps systemd[1]: app-worker.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=217/USER
2026-06-25T14:22:17-05:00 vps systemd[1]: app-worker.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

$ journalctl -u app-worker -b --no-pager -o short-iso | grep -E 'Started|Failed|Scheduled restart|Main process exited'

2026-06-25T14:20:58-05:00 vps systemd[1]: Started app-worker.service - Background job worker.
2026-06-25T14:20:59-05:00 vps systemd[1]: app-worker.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
2026-06-25T14:21:04-05:00 vps systemd[1]: app-worker.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 4.
2026-06-25T14:22:17-05:00 vps systemd[1]: Started app-worker.service - Background job worker.
2026-06-25T14:22:17-05:00 vps systemd[2144]: app-worker.service: Failed to determine user credentials: No such process
2026-06-25T14:22:17-05:00 vps systemd[2144]: app-worker.service: Failed at step USER spawning /srv/app/bin/worker: No such process
2026-06-25T14:22:17-05:00 vps systemd[1]: app-worker.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=217/USER
2026-06-25T14:22:17-05:00 vps systemd[1]: app-worker.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

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