[SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

Jj · 2015-08-31 10:14:29

EDIT:
This thread got a bit off topic as I found several errors with my system not relevant to the cause of this error for me. If you have this error at boot, I've summised the fix in the last post on the thread (post number 10), but double check this post too to see that you do have the same error first!
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Hi all,

So I finished my first ever Arch Linux install using the wiki beginners guide and other wiki pages, so just want to start with a big thank you to everyone who contributes and maintains the information; I've managed to get all set up with xfce and lxdm and get all my hardware working only having prior experience with Ubuntu/Ubuntu clones using just the wiki and one cry for help with my WiFi card, so you are doing a fantastic job!

My one remaining niggle is that when I boot, my boot pauses for 1min 30secs for 'Job dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b072209d\x2d279a\x2d41cd\x' before continuting as normal and seeming to work. using blkid, I've matched the UUID to my swap partition and I looked up the error messages:

$ journalctl -b
...
dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b072209d\x2d279a\x2d41cd\x2db4b3\x2d16eab1a84d60.device: Job dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b072209d\x2d279a\x2d41cd\x
Timed out waiting for device dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b072209d\x2d279a\x2d41cd\x2db4b3\x2d16eab1a84d60.device.
Dependency failed for /dev/disk/by-uuid/b072209d-279a-41cd-b4b3-16eab1a84d60.
Dependency failed for Swap.
swap.target: Job swap.target/start failed with result 'dependency'.
dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b072209d\x2d279a\x2d41cd\x2db4b3\x2d16eab1a84d60.swap: Job dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b072209d\x2d279a\x2d41cd\x2d
dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b072209d\x2d279a\x2d41cd\x2db4b3\x2d16eab1a84d60.device: Job dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b072209d\x2d279a\x2d41cd\x
...

Next I checked that my swap partition is working:

$ swapon && free
NAME      TYPE       SIZE USED PRIO
/dev/sdb9 partition 11.2G   0B   -1
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:       12190888      801380    10708160      181104      681348    11135672
Swap:      11718652           0    11718652

I was concerned that my swap may not be working because of the 0B used, so I decided to open a LOT of tabs in chromium and change swappiness to test my swap:

$ sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=100
vm.swappiness = 100

Give it a minute...

$ free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:       12190888     1677076     9769028      142820      744784    10295964
Swap:      11718652           0    11718652

I also tried to hibernate the computer, but it just shutdown. I'm only guessing here, but it doesn't seem like swap is working properly?

My fstab entry for swap is:

# Swap Partition /dev/sdb9
UUID=b072209d-279a-41cd-b4b3-16eab1a84d60       none    swap    defaults                                        0       0

Any help appreciated thanks all!

JJ

Last edited by Jj (2015-09-01 03:36:37)

ugjka · 2015-08-31 11:13:23

Regarding hibernation, have you set it up? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Po … parameters

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-08-31 11:29:47

Remove the swap line from /etc/fstab and let systemd mount it automatically.

http://www.freedesktop.org/software/sys … rator.html

Jj · 2015-08-31 11:50:21

Thanks ugjka, I'm just trying to do that now.

I seem to have gotten rid of the boot warning by reformatting the swap partition with mkswap and updating all the UUIDS.

However, I have now found a whole new level of pain... Aparently my /boot is totally empty 0.o

Really not sure how I've managed this one. I set it up with a seperate boot partition, and my system boots totally fine from grub, and /boot is mounted properly, but when i go into /boot it just says lost&found. So problem 1 solved... terrifying new problem just discovered 0.0

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-08-31 12:12:47

Jj wrote:

I set it up with a seperate boot partition, and my system boots totally fine from grub, and /boot is mounted properly, but when i go into /boot it just says lost&found. So problem 1 solved... terrifying new problem just discovered 0.0

If systemd mounts /boot (see my link above) then it automatically un-mounts it to protect the delicate FAT filesystem from damage (in a UEFI system).

If you perform an operation that requires /boot to be mounted (such as installing a new kernel package), systemd will do that automatically and then un-mount it again after a few minutes.

EDIT: typos a gogo

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2015-08-31 12:13:21)

Jj · 2015-08-31 14:11:03

Hmm maybe that's where I'm going wrong? my computer is UEFI, but it's UEFI is awful, so I boot it in legacy mode on GPT disk. I have an unformatted 5MiB area set with the bios grub flag, and I formatted my boot partition Ext4 (my root is BTRFS). It also doesn't mount when I run

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Which bash errors with no such thing.

Do we really have to use FAT for boot partitions? really not a fan of that; It isn't even open source?

OR

Do you mean the EFI partition? I'm a bit confused... even in uefi mode it seems weird to unmount /boot!

Last edited by Jj (2015-08-31 14:13:36)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-08-31 16:06:40

If you are not booting in UEFI mode then your /boot partition can be ext4 (FAT is only needed for EFI system partitions).

Post your entire fstab

Jj · 2015-09-01 02:43:21

Ah no, I knew the fstab was okay, the partition I was mounting was just empty is all.

So I went on a long old walk to try and find where all my boot directory contents were, to no avail. I mounted every partition searched everywhere and couldnt find it. It was like there was boot code in the legacy boot partition that pointed to the kernel and initramfs and then it all ceased to exist... which gave me the idea:

sudo journalctl -b | grep boot

Of which the relevant lines were:

Sep 01 11:47:21 Arch systemd[1]: Found device Crucial_CT256M550SSD3 Arch_boot.
Sep 01 11:47:21 Arch systemd-fsck[256]: Arch_boot: clean, 11/40480 files, 10759/161792 blocks
Sep 01 11:47:21 Arch systemd[1]: boot.mount: Directory /boot to mount over is not empty, mounting anyway.
Sep 01 11:47:21 Arch systemd[1]: Mounting /boot...
Sep 01 11:47:21 Arch systemd[1]: Mounted /boot.

when I installed my system, I hadn't had my boot partition mounted! so all my information was in /boot on the root partition, then at boot, the system reads the fstab, sees it should mount my boot parition, which it does, over the top of the /boot directory data!

I have now copied all the information from the boot directory to the boot partition and updated grub and my boot directory issue is fixed!

Now to check if my original swap error is still happening....

Jj · 2015-09-01 02:57:00

Success!

Now that I had my grub.cfg updated, I did the

sudo mkinitcpio -p linux

command to build my hooks into the initramfs and hibernate, ergo swap is working :-D

Wow that was a longer problem than I was expecting, but I learnt a lot and had fun!

Thanks for all the suggestions

JJ

Jj · 2015-09-01 03:15:06

Just to recap for anyone searching this error, because I uncovered a few different problems with my set up so this may seem a tad confusing:

In my case this error was caused by swap not being formatted quite right. I am dual booting with Ubuntu, and as swap works fine in my Ubuntu, when I installed Arch, I didn't actually reformat my swap partition, I just reused it. This seems to have lead to the error I was having at boot.

When I reformatted the partition:

sudo swapoff /dev/sdXY
sudo mkswap /dev/sdXY
sudo swapon /dev/sdxy

The boot time error was resolved.

Note if you do this mkswap will create a new UUID for your swap partition, so if you use UUIDs in your fstab, you have to update it.

Looking into it a bit based on what head_on_a_stick shared, you can remove your swap partition from fstab if you like, as systemd goes looking for it at boot. But when it's configured properly it doesn't matter; fstab overrides systemd, so if you've already done it, its a kind of redundancy so no sense to remove IMHO, if you don't have a swap entry in your fstab with systemd, doesn't seem like it matters enough to go out of your way to add it in unless you have problems.

However removing the entry from fstab itself had no impact on this error for me as there was something amok with the swap partition is seems, but it's good to know!

Racu · 2017-01-30 03:05:45

Just for the sake of other people looking for this error.

I installed Windogs 10, Arch(with Swap labeled as "Swap", and then Mint, had this error after installing Mint. Mint had relabeled the swap partition to "Linux Swap".
So I just went to fstab and edited the label.

Regards
Racu

WorMzy · 2017-01-30 19:42:25

Please don't necrobump, Racu.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … bumping.22

Closing.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-08-31 10:14:29

[SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#2 2015-08-31 11:13:23

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#3 2015-08-31 11:29:47

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#4 2015-08-31 11:50:21

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#5 2015-08-31 12:12:47

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#6 2015-08-31 14:11:03

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#7 2015-08-31 16:06:40

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#8 2015-09-01 02:43:21

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#9 2015-09-01 02:57:00

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#10 2015-09-01 03:15:06

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#11 2017-01-30 03:05:45

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

#12 2017-01-30 19:42:25

Re: [SOLVED] A start job is running for dev-disk-by... (1min 30s)

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