I had an AWS Linux 2023 VM reboot unexpectedly. When trying to identify the cause I found messages like those below being logged at 2 per hour (some jitter in the exact times).
Nov 7 22:36:45 myawshost systemd[1692982]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 7 23:10:47 myawshost systemd[1741168]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 7 23:36:31 myawshost systemd[1765063]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 8 00:11:21 myawshost systemd[1813100]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 8 00:36:36 myawshost systemd[1837054]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 8 01:10:42 myawshost systemd[1883962]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 8 01:36:47 myawshost systemd[1907782]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 8 02:10:54 myawshost systemd[1959756]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 8 02:37:05 myawshost systemd[1983430]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 8 03:10:41 myawshost systemd[2031557]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 8 03:56:41 myawshost systemd[2056857]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 8 04:11:22 myawshost systemd[2104844]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
Nov 8 04:36:36 myawshost systemd[2127913]: Reached target shutdown.target - Shutdown.
I would only expect this message to appear at host shutdown - in the instances above, the host remained up and apparently functioning normally. These log entries appear bother before and after the unexpected reboot.
Why is systemd telling my it has reached shutdown.target when the host is not actually shutting down / services are still running?
crondwas starting and then shutting down once the command finished.