Patroni 4.1.0 causes issues because of systemd notify

Hi all,

while spinning up new Patroni cluster with version 4.1.0 (which has been
added to the Debian repo 2 days ago), my clusters won’t bootstrap
properly anymore.

At first, logs looks clear but anyways, all systemd operations like
start/stop/restart will run into a timeout, causing the service to stop
which then will break the cluster at all.

It seems like the new systemd notify feature is causing this, since
using Patroni 4.0.7 with `Type=simple` in the systemd unit file works
pretty fine.

I’m on Debian 12 and psql 17.

This is the patroni log after bootstrapping. Everything works fine until
the 30s timeout of the systemd unit kicks in:

Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13066]: Success. You can now start
the database server using:
Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13066]:
/usr/lib/postgresql/17/bin/pg_ctl -D /var/lib/postgresql/patroni/data -l
logfile start
Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13059]: 2025-10-22 17:43:09,768
INFO: postmaster pid=13083
Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13084]: localhost:5432 - no
response
Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13083]: 2025-10-22 17:43:09.780
CEST [13083] LOG: starting PostgreSQL 17.6 (Debian 17.6-2.pgdg12+1) on
x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (Debian 12.2.0-14+deb12u1) 12.2.0,
64-bit
Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13083]: 2025-10-22 17:43:09.780
CEST [13083] LOG: listening on IPv4 address "0.0.0.0", port 5432
Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13083]: 2025-10-22 17:43:09.780
CEST [13083] LOG: listening on IPv6 address "::", port 5432
Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13083]: 2025-10-22 17:43:09.782
CEST [13083] LOG: listening on Unix socket
"/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432”
Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13087]: 2025-10-22 17:43:09.789
CEST [13087] LOG: database system was shut down at 2025-10-22 17:43:09
CEST
Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13083]: 2025-10-22 17:43:09.798
CEST [13083] LOG: database system is ready to accept connections
Oct 22 17:43:09 hetzner-lab01 systemd[1]: patroni.service: Got
notification message from PID 13083, but reception only permitted for
main PID 13059
Oct 22 17:43:10 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13091]: localhost:5432 - accepting
connections
Oct 22 17:43:10 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13093]: localhost:5432 - accepting
connections
Oct 22 17:43:10 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13059]: 2025-10-22 17:43:10,814
INFO: establishing a new patroni heartbeat connection to postgres
Oct 22 17:43:10 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13059]: 2025-10-22 17:43:10,918
INFO: running post_bootstrap
Oct 22 17:43:11 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13059]: 2025-10-22 17:43:11,225
INFO: initialized a new cluster
Oct 22 17:43:11 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13059]: 2025-10-22 17:43:11,373
INFO: no action. I am (hetzner-lab01), the leader with the lock
Oct 22 17:43:21 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13059]: 2025-10-22 17:43:21,276
INFO: no action. I am (hetzner-lab01), the leader with the lock
Oct 22 17:43:31 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13059]: 2025-10-22 17:43:31,368
INFO: no action. I am (hetzner-lab01), the leader with the lock
Oct 22 17:43:37 hetzner-lab01 systemd[1]: patroni.service: start
operation timed out. Terminating.
Oct 22 17:43:37 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13083]: 2025-10-22 17:43:37.987
CEST [13083] LOG: received fast shutdown request
Oct 22 17:43:37 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13083]: 2025-10-22 17:43:37.989
CEST [13083] LOG: aborting any active transactions
Oct 22 17:43:37 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13095]: 2025-10-22 17:43:37.990
CEST [13095] FATAL: terminating connection due to administrator command
Oct 22 17:43:37 hetzner-lab01 systemd[1]: patroni.service: Got
notification message from PID 13083, but reception only permitted for
main PID 13059
Oct 22 17:43:37 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13083]: 2025-10-22 17:43:37.992
CEST [13083] LOG: background worker "logical replication launcher" (PID
13090) exited with exit code 1
Oct 22 17:43:37 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13085]: 2025-10-22 17:43:37.994
CEST [13085] LOG: shutting down
Oct 22 17:43:37 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13085]: 2025-10-22 17:43:37.996
CEST [13085] LOG: checkpoint starting: shutdown immediate
Oct 22 17:43:38 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13085]: 2025-10-22 17:43:38.014
CEST [13085] LOG: checkpoint complete: wrote 17 buffers (0.1%); 0 WAL
file(s) added, 0 removed, 0 recycled; write=0.005 s, sync=0.004 s,
total=0.020 s; sync files=13, longest=0.002 s, average=0.001 s;
distance=36 kB, estimate=36 kB; lsn=0/152D6F0, redo lsn=0/152D6F0
Oct 22 17:43:38 hetzner-lab01 patroni[13083]: 2025-10-22 17:43:38.020
CEST [13083] LOG: database system is shut down
Oct 22 17:43:39 hetzner-lab01 systemd[1]: patroni.service: Failed with
result ‘timeout’.
Oct 22 17:43:39 hetzner-lab01 systemd[1]: Failed to start
patroni.service - Runners to orchestrate a high-availability PostgreSQL.

Any recommendations how to fix/workaround this?

cheers,
Hauke

—
🥷 Hauke Bruno Wollentin