rc.local should require network-online.target

Confirmed by lp:1442044 which also have dupe

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

The LSB (http://refspecs.linuxbase.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/facilname.html) has never required to wait with calling rc.local until the network is up. After all, that might very well be "never", and this would both diminish the usefulness of rc.local as well as change existing behaviour. Or did you see some documentation which says otherwise?

If you need to run something after getting online, I suggest putting it into /etc/network/ifup.d/.

While I agree that this may never have been guaranteed, it has been working with all previous init systems. For me, the implied policy of using rc.local is: Run after all other init stuff has finished.

For example, https://github.com/puppetlabs/razor-server uses modifying rc.local in order to trigger some post installation actions to happen once the node has rebooted after being installed. This works pretty well with Precise and Trusty and also seems to be fine with most other distros.

Also, having a server with no network connectivity ever will also not be very useful. This is certainly different for desktop systems, but then, why would you have the

After=network.target

at all?

http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-systemd/systemd.git/commit/?id=4a268404

This bug was fixed in the package systemd - 220-5ubuntu2

---------------
systemd (220-5ubuntu2) wily; urgency=medium

  * boot-and-services: Drop expectedFailure from NSpawn.test_boot() test, this
    seems to work properly now.

systemd (220-5ubuntu1) wily; urgency=medium

  * Merge with Debian unstable. Remaining Ubuntu changes:
    - Hack to support system-image read-only /etc, and modify files in
      /etc/writable/ instead.
    - Keep our much simpler udev maintainer scripts (all platforms must
      support udev, no debconf).
    - initramfs init-top: Drop scsi_wait_scan and udevadm settle, we do that
      in a more sensible way with wait-for-root.
    - initramfs init-bottom: If LVM is installed, settle udev,
      otherwise we get missing LV symlinks. Workaround for LP #1185394.
    - Add debian/udev.lvm2.init: Dummy SysV init script to satisfy insserv
      dependencies to "lvm2" which is handled with udev rules in Ubuntu.
    - Add debian/udev.lvm2.service to avoid running the dummy lvm2 init
      script.
    - Provide shutdown fallback for upstart. (LP: #1370329)
    - debian/extra/ifup@.service: Additionally run for "auto" class. We don't
      really support "allow-hotplug" in Ubuntu at the moment, so we need to
      deal with "auto" devices appearing after "/etc/init.d/networking start"
      already ran. (LP: #1374521) Also run ifup in the background during boot,
      to avoid blocking network.target. (LP: #1425376)
    - ifup@.service: Drop dependency on networking.service (i. e.
      /etc/init.d/networking), and merely ensure that /run/network exists.
      This avoids unnecessary dependencies/waiting during boot and dependency
      cycles if hooks wait for other interfaces to come up (like ifenslave
      with bonding interfaces). (LP: #1414544)
    - Add Get-RTC-is-in-local-time-setting-from-etc-default-rc.patch: In
      Ubuntu we currently keep the setting whether the RTC is in local or UTC
      time in /etc/default/rcS "UTC=yes|no", instead of /etc/adjtime.
      (LP: #1377258)
    - Put session scopes into all cgroup controllers. This makes unprivileged
      user LXC containers work under systemd. (LP: #1346734)
    - systemctl: Don't forward telinit u to upstart. This works around
      upstart's Restart() always reexec'ing /sbin/init on Restart(), even if
      that changes to point to systemd during the upgrade. This avoids running
      systemd during a dist-upgrade. (LP: #1430479)
    - Drop hwdb-update dependency from udev-trigger.service, which got
      introduced in v219-stable. This causes udev and plymouth to start too
      late and isn't really needed in Ubuntu yet as we don't support stateless
      systems yet and handle hwdb.bin updates through dpkg triggers. This can
      be dropped again with initramfs-tools 0.117.
    - Lower Breaks: to plymouth version which has the udev inotify fix in
      Ubuntu.
    - Lower apparmor Breaks: to the Ubuntu version that dropped $remote_fs.
    - Change systemd-sysv's conflicts to upstart-sysv. (LP: #1422681)
    - Make failure of boot-and-services NSpawn.test_boot non-fatal for now.
      This currently fails when being triggered by Jenkins, but is totall...

This commit actually didn't reliably fix this bug, but given the length of time here, I've opened a new bug #1950906