Re: Does a bad /etc/fstab entry of a 'spare' drive prevent system booting?

On Mon, May 25, 2026 at 09:18:55AM -0400, Robert Heller wrote:
> At Mon, 25 May 2026 13:49:40 +0100 Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> >
> > Andy Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > On Mon, May 25, 2026 at 12:41:30PM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> > > > However it does seem a bit 'unfriendly' to make the system totally
> > > > unbootable if a drive that isn't needed at all for the boot process
> > > > can't be mounted by fstab.

[...]

> > It was a drive used for hourly 'snapshot' backups so needed to be
> > mounted normally.  I think the nofail mount option would fulfil what I
> > need though.
> 
> The autofs/automount option would also work.  I've done this to save "wear" of
> the backup disk, setting it to spin down and "sleep" when not in use, thus
> extending its life.  (It would do for the backup disk to wearout *before* the
> main live disk(s)...)

Around here, the mount/umount are part of the backup procedure (along with an
fsck -fn, so I get early warning when the medium gets flaky). I don't want to
have that medium mounted (and thus LUKS-unlocked) for longer than necessary.

But yes, this is an iteresting topic, because different people tend to have
pretty diverse needs/preferences.

Cheers
-- 
t

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