[systemd-devel] Stricter handling of failing mounts during boot under systemd - crap idea !

[Jóhann B. Guðmundsson]

On 06/29/2015 03:01 PM, jon wrote:
> On Mon, 2015-06-29 at 14:21 +0000, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote:
>> On 06/29/2015 02:08 PM, jon wrote:
>>> https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-notes/ch-information.en.html#systemd-upgrade-default-init-system
>>>
>>> I just installed debian 8.1, on the whole my reaction is mixed, one
>>> thing however really pisses me off more than any other
>>>
>>> "5.6.1. Stricter handling of failing mounts during boot under systemd"
>>>
>>> This is not "Stricter" it is a change in default behaviour.
>>>
>>> This change is a shit idea, who do I shout at to get the behaviour
>>> modified to back to sensible ?
>>>
>> The systemd community only recommends what downstream consumers of it
>> should do but does not dictate or othewise decided anything how those
>> consumers eventually decide to implement systemd so if you dont like how
>> systemd is implemented in Debian you should voice your concerns with the
>> Debian community.
> Ok
>
> Who writes/maintains the code that parses "nofail" in /etc/fstab ?
> Who writes/maintains the typical system boot code (whatever has replaced
> rc.sysinit) ?
>
> I suspect the answer to both is the systemd maintainers, in which case
> is this not the correct place to bitch about it ?

util-linux ( see man mount ) is what provides the nofail option and I 
dont follow what you mean by getting the behaviour to modify it back to 
sensible since systemd does already do what is sensible to do and always 
has.

The fact is systemd has no means in figuring out which file systems are 
crucial and which ones are not hence it has always done the safe thing 
and dropped users to the emergency target if device listed in fstab has 
not appeared after a period of time so administrators have had to tell 
systemd which ones they consider to be none crucial to the bootup 
process by adding nofail mount option to the relevant device entry in 
fstab so I'm not sure what the Debian community considers as  "stricter 
handling of failing mounts during boot under systemd" since this has 
always been the case with systemd.

Perhaps systemd's behaviour is different from one ( or all ) of the 
other initsystem(s) that exist in Debian and that's what this 
documentation entry is about but not about any changes to systemd itself.

My advice to you is simply to add the nofail mount options to the device 
entries in fstab for devices you consider not being crucial to the 
bootup process and systemd will happily carry on your boot process 
without dropping you to the emergency target if that device is not 
available.

JBG