Attribute values being randomly reordered

[ballit6782]

In the Status pane of some services, some attribute values are being reordered randomly.

For example, in this view :

The order of virtchd.socket, virtchd-admin.socket and virtchd-ro.socket are all randomly changing.

[welcome]

Thanks for opening your first issue here! 💖

[kainctl]

Hey sorry. I have trouble understanding what the issue is exactly. :/

Could you maybe do a quick screen capture?
How many units do you have selected?
When do they change the order?

The currently highlighted unit always moves to the "top" of the status list, is this what you mean?

[ballit6782]

• I just tried, but wf-recorder seems to be broken on my setup, I'll look into it
• I only have a single unit selected
• It's not the "selected units" that change in order, but the values of attributes, in this case TriggeredBy :
  • The order of virtchd.socket, virtchd-admin.socket and virtchd-ro.socket are all randomly changing.

[kainctl]

Ahh. I think I see what you mean.
Then I think two screenshots (before & after) would help to clarify it just to be sure that I understand you correctly.
But if that is the case, then I can't reproduce it locally. :/
Please let me know your OS and systemd version.
Can you "reproduce" it by calling systemctl status multiple times and seeing it reorder there as well?

[ballit6782]

This is systemd 254 on NixOS 23.11 (and the behaviour is the same with systemd 256 on NixOS 24.05). and yes indeed the output from systemctl status is ordered differently each time :

[user@device:~]$ systemctl status virtchd.service
○ virtchd.service - libvirt Cloud Hypervisor daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/virtchd.service; linked; preset: enabled)
    Drop-In: /nix/store/y6awzniy1xxdvj1ay0qc7s0wk7pn650i-system-units/virtchd.serv>
             └─overrides.conf
     Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: ○ virtchd.socket
             ○ virtchd-ro.socket
             ○ virtchd-admin.socket
       Docs: man:virtchd(8)
             https://libvirt.org/

[user@device:~]$ systemctl status virtchd.service
○ virtchd.service - libvirt Cloud Hypervisor daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/virtchd.service; linked; preset: enabled)
    Drop-In: /nix/store/y6awzniy1xxdvj1ay0qc7s0wk7pn650i-system-units/virtchd.serv>
             └─overrides.conf
     Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: ○ virtchd.socket
             ○ virtchd-admin.socket
             ○ virtchd-ro.socket
       Docs: man:virtchd(8)
             https://libvirt.org/

[kainctl]

Thanks. Yeah, this is a tricky one.
I have thought about different trade-offs, but I won't be deviating from systemds behaviour.
If systemd keeps reordering the outputs, then there is no good way for me to "patch" it without significantly increasing the complexity. :/

I might add a "pause output" option in the future but that is about all I can do.
Depending on your needs, you might also consider generally increasing the refresh interval:

https://isd-project.github.io/isd/customization/#preview-and-selection-refresh-interval

Though, of course, this might not be what you want.