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

On Mon, 25 May 2026 20:29:36 +0000
Andy Smith <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, May 25, 2026 at 08:13:35PM +0100, Joe wrote:
> > In case it helps anyone else in future, the same applies if a remote
> > samba share is mounted by fstab, the share will not be available
> > during boot, so it must be marked in fstab as 'not required for
> > boot', for which I use the 'noauto' and 'x-systemd.automount'
> > options.  
> 
> I think you may have other issues, as this is not supposed to happen.
> systemd is supposed to be able to tell (by their type) that network
> filesystems like smbfs and nfs require to wait until network is up.
> For filesystems that require network but don't necessarily make it
> obvious by their type, you are supposed to use the "_netdev" mount
> option to let systemd know.
> 
> If it's trying to mount these before the network is up then something
> odd is going on. If it's failing to mount these after the network is
> up then there is a problem somewhere.
> 
> This is documented in systemd.mount(5).
> 

Maybe that's how it is now. I switched my sid installation to systemd
fairly early in its life in Debian. Maybe it was a bit less polished
then. Certainly adding the options I mentioned, as recommended by
various Net gurus at the time, fixed it. And now, If It Ain't Broke...