Arch Linux

imran1008

Member

Registered: 2011-01-23

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] System unbootable after systemd update

I just updated systemd from version 208-10 to 212-1. After a reboot, systemd waits for the availability of the mount unit files from the systemd-fstab-generator. After 90 seconds of waiting, it gives up and drops into the recovery shell. In the recovery shell, you can do

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl default

For some reason, disk I/O becomes extremely slow in the recovery shell. I don't know if systemd enables some mount flags (such as sync) to make it so slow. A slightly more permanent workaround is to change your /etc/fstab so that you don't have any of the mount points automounted (except for / of course). You can do this with the noauto flag.

Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

Last edited by imran1008 (2014-04-07 04:05:14)

AdrianCohea

Member

Registered: 2013-06-29

Posts: 16

Re: [SOLVED] System unbootable after systemd update

I am on systemd 212-2. Just rebooted fine. Do you have a nonstandard /etc/fstab?

---

gpg --keyserver hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-key 0x77660e16dba99933

0B85 1AC2 4980 B654 0DA3  D1E1 7766 0E16 DBA9 9933

imran1008

Member

Registered: 2011-01-23

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] System unbootable after systemd update

I don't think so. This happened to me on two of my machines. Here is one of my /etc/fstab:

tmpfs                                                              /tmp          tmpfs  nodev,nosuid                                           0 0
UUID=471f74d2-5a34-4e1e-b8c3-cfb0335afda5    /               btrfs   space_cache,inode_cache,compress=lzo   0 1
UUID=734a3085-a3c3-4775-9c92-91fbbe776823  swap         swap defaults,pri=1                                           0 0
UUID=6bd77ebc-dc85-4a0e-bc3e-4aa6a5160178 /boot         ext2   defaults                                                   0 1
UUID=fecfa3d1-7889-4c0f-92a9-870457c19f39     swap         swap defaults,pri=1                                           0 0
UUID=4340edf1-4f90-44a7-83b4-f8999180422f     /mnt/tmp    btrfs  space_cache,inode_cache,compress=lzo  0 0

Sorry about alignment. I tried each one of them individually and got the same problem. Only after commenting out everything except for root (/) made the system boot without problems.

imran1008

Member

Registered: 2011-01-23

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] System unbootable after systemd update

I also tried it with /dev/sda# notation (not just with UUID)

imran1008

Member

Registered: 2011-01-23

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] System unbootable after systemd update

Found the issue! It was the kernel. I had CONFIG_AUDIT enabled in my kernel and the README file of systemd mentions that it doesn't work well with the option enabled. Disabling it fixed the issue. I also change a few other options, such as enabling CONFIG_FHANDLE, CONFIG_IPV6 (from module to built-in), CONFIG_AUTOFS4_FS (from module to built-in), CONFIG_SCHEDSTATS and disabling CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER. I highly suspect it was the disabling of CONFIG_AUDIT that fixed it.