Old issue of mounting a data disk, now can't work around

General system EndeavourOS installation
1

Hello, this happened sometimes already with Antergos as now with EOS. Normally one reboot would fix the situation. Now it seems to be the result of every boot. /b resides on a data disk holding music, video and documents. It has manually partitioned and configured to be mounted on every boot. Now EFI seems having hijacked the disk?!

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Can it be that some yesterday’s updates have caused this somehow? This happened today that I cannot work around this anymore.

Thanks!

2

I guess you have a reason to use systemd-fstab-generator? I’m not famililiar with that tool, so can’t much help with that. But I just read the man page, and for me it seems a bit confusing compared to writing /etc/fstab manually.

Is it possible / sensible in your case to write /etc/fstab manually instead of using systemd-fstab-generator?

You might want to check the output of

    lsblk -fm

If you can’t boot normally, use the USB stick…

3

Thanks @manuel!

I am pretty sure I haven’t had any reason and I have not used systemd-fstab-generator at all. But I just found out the reason for the issue of getting stuck to this. There was en external hard disk attached to the USB socket. Now I can reboot again.

But still I’d like to ask why this same error appears at times although I have no other disks attached to the PC? This has been present as long as I have had Antergos and EOS. Maybe /etc/fstab configuration is somehow wrong.

4

With this information I guess /etc/fstab is in the center of the issue.
Care to share the file?

5

Ok, here it comes.

/etc/fstab: static file system information.

Use ‘blkid’ to print the universally unique identifier for a

device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices

that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).

UUID=2791-8FC0 /boot/efi vfat defaults,rw,relatime 0 0
UUID=664e383b-f057-4555-9edc-c1ef956795eb /boot ext2 defaults,rw,relatime 0 0
UUID=da7a9d4e-fd16-4ce2-97ed-fe231b9e9e05 / ext4 defaults,rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1
UUID=cbe4a8a8-1364-48d3-83fd-8e4579b79880 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /b ext4 defaults 0 2 noauto,x-systemd.automount

6

/dev/sdb1 /b ext4 defaults 0 2 noauto,x-systemd.automount
you should use UUID here too!

as /dev/sdb1 can change if you plug other drives

7

Thanks @joekamprad! I wonder where that ending “x-systemd.automount” has come from. I will look into adding UUID, if that helps.

8

It refers to automounting when you plug in the disk.
But as Joe said, replacing /dev/sdb1 with the correct UUID (or the LABEL) should help.

9

Thanks @manuel! I just edited fstab and I’ll check what happens in the next reboot.

10

Thanks a lot @joekampraad and @manuel! Now I can boot reliably even if the external hard disk is attached during boot. This is great!

-vp-

2 Likes
11

Sorry for the typo! Of course I meant @joekamprad! Thanks a million!

-vp-

1 Like