Arch Linux

andrewclive

Member

Registered: 2019-05-19

Posts: 29

[SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

As a relative newbie to linux, I installed Arch a few months ago and I didn't generate my fstab in the correct sequence. Consequently, there is no boot partition mounted to  my fstab. My arch installation has been working fine so I haven't really bothered about this problem, but now I am confident enough in Arch to try and fix it. However, I'm not sure how to do so, and would like a little help. Should I just manually add the boot partition to fstab? Then regenerate grub.cfg? Do I have to do anything else?

lsblk -f

 sda                                                                          
└─sda1      ext4         2807be14-7e4c-4fe4-a844-0fd3c44465ba  396.9G     8% /mnt/2807be14-7e4c-4fe4
sdb                                                                          
├─sdb1      ext4         66c8fe88-d47e-41d6-a603-6a5fb37cbe6b  264.9G    27% /mnt/66c8fe88-d47e-41d6
├─sdb2      ext4         67617fc2-68c6-4af1-9ee4-40ecf76a656b                
└─sdb3      ext4         0f756e85-27e3-4ad8-a58e-822dbf1659b3                
sr0                                                                          
nvme0n1                                                                      
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat         51F8-3C86                                           
├─nvme0n1p2 ext4         9dc240ba-0b97-4abd-8b5f-5d626f8ae28e  194.7G     8% /
└─nvme0n1p3 swap         a555339f-61b7-4364-a063-189fa2c9a522               [ Swap] 

efibootmgr -v

 BootCurrent: 0004
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0004,0005,0012,0001,0003,0002,0000
Boot0000* Linux Boot Manager	VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)
Boot0001* Hard Drive	BBS(HD,,0x0)..GO..NO..........S.a.m.s.u.n.g. .S.S.D. .9.6.0. .E.V.O. .2.5.0.G.B....................A...........................%8R.........H..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.S.a.m.s.u.n.g. .S.S.D. .9.6.0. .E.V.O. .2.5.0.G.B........BO..NO........o.W.D.C. .W.D.1.0.0.1.F.A.L.S.-.0.0.J.7.B.1....................A...........................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L. . . . .W. .-.D.M.W.T.A.4.V.1.2.7.1.1.4........BO..NO........o.C.T.5.0.0.M.X.5.0.0.S.S.D.1....................A...........................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.9.1.8.0.1.E.A.E.2.F.0.1. . . . . . . . ........BO
Boot0002* Linux Boot Manager	VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)
Boot0003* CD/DVD Drive	BBS(CDROM,,0x0)..GO..NO........o.H.L.-.D.T.-.S.T. .D.V.D.R.A.M. .G.H.2.2.N.S.4.0....................A...........................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.2.8.8.A.B.5.2.8.6.7.A.3. . . . . . . . ........BO
Boot0004* GRUB	HD(1,GPT,f2aab596-45f2-4468-b0fb-0f53a136093b,0x1000,0x96000)/File(\EFI\GRUB\GRUBX64.EFI)
Boot0005* manjaro	HD(1,GPT,f2aab596-45f2-4468-b0fb-0f53a136093b,0x1000,0x96000)/File(\EFI\MANJARO\GRUBX64.EFI)
Boot0012* UEFI OS	HD(1,GPT,f2aab596-45f2-4468-b0fb-0f53a136093b,0x1000,0x96000)/File(\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI)..BO

fstab

 <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/nvme0n1p2
UUID=9dc240ba-0b97-4abd-8b5f-5d626f8ae28e       /               ext4            rw,relatime     0 1

# /dev/nvme0n1p3
UUID=a555339f-61b7-4364-a063-189fa2c9a522       none            swap            defaults        0 0

/dev/disk/by-uuid/2807be14-7e4c-4fe4-a844-0fd3c44465ba /mnt/2807be14-7e4c-4fe4-a844-0fd3c44465ba auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/66c8fe88-d47e-41d6-a603-6a5fb37cbe6b /mnt/66c8fe88-d47e-41d6-a603-6a5fb37cbe6b auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0

#~/.cache tmpfs using RAM as cache
tmpfs /home/andrew/.cache tmpfs nodev,nosuid,size=8G 0 0 

Thank you in advance for your help

Last edited by andrewclive (2020-01-09 00:55:16)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,736

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

If you didn't run into a problem by now then this isn't something you inherently have to do (and in fact might be better to not do, depending on the space of your ESP) if you are using GRUB, GRUB has no problem to locate the kernel from a linux file system.

Also this is actually an Arch install here? I see at least one Manjaro loader.

andrewclive

Member

Registered: 2019-05-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

Thanks for the reply. It is arch I'm on now, I was on manjaro before. Can I get rid of the other entries in the bootloader?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,736

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

Yes check man efibootmgr

andrewclive

Member

Registered: 2019-05-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

Thanks V1del. Got rid of the manjaro loader.

andrewclive

Member

Registered: 2019-05-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

I understand that my system is okay and that I don't need to have the boot partition in the fstab, but what is going on with my system? How is boot mounted? Any help would be appreciated even if it is just to a wiki/man page.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,736

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

If a mount point doesn't exist, it will simply be a directory. /boot is a plain directory on your root filesystem. GRUB can open the ext4 filesystem and find it's files and the kernel images it has to load in the boot directory

andrewclive

Member

Registered: 2019-05-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

Thanks for the reply V1del. I guess I understand, but if that's the case why is the procedure to have /boot mounted via fstab?

teckk

Member

Registered: 2013-02-21

Posts: 519

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

there is no boot partition mounted to  my fstab

There doesn't have to be a boot partition. Looks like you don't have one.
If you have everything in /, that's fine. It's less trouble.

People sometimes have problems when they have a separate /boot, and they forget to mount it before pacman -Syu. Then you won't update the kernel.

You can check with:

pacman -Qi linux
uname -a

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_boot_process
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Partitioning#/boot

Edit: If you have / mounted then you have /boot mounted. You have it on the same partition.

Last edited by teckk (2020-01-08 22:44:39)

andrewclive

Member

Registered: 2019-05-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

Thank you teckk. I think I do have a boot partition using BKlid  on my nvme0n1p1 vfat I have this

 UUID="51F8-3C86" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="f2aab596-45f2-4468-b0fb-0f53a136093b" 

As you can see from efibootmgr -v my grub boots

 Boot0004* GRUB	HD(1,GPT,f2aab596-45f2-4468-b0fb-0f53a136093b,0x1000,0x96000)/File(\EFI\GRUB\GRUBX64.EFI) 

As I wrote everything is working well, just no /boot in fstab.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,736

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

Yes that is the ESP partition, that is needed for your firmware/BIOS/UEFI to find "something" to load. That happens to be GRUB, GRUB can then load the actual kernel from the / file system. If you were to use systemd-boot instead, you should be mounting that partition to /boot, as systemd-boot requires the kernel images it wants to load to be present on the ESP.

Read the boot process links you were linked and follow the UEFI trail, maybe also throw in explicitly: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … _Interface https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EF … _partition and https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/2 … work-then/

Last edited by V1del (2020-01-08 23:33:41)

andrewclive

Member

Registered: 2019-05-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] No "boot" partition in fstab

V1del. Thanks a lot. I understand.