[systemd-devel] Add DATADOS, fat32 to fstab file

[Kai Krakow]

Am Fri, 7 Apr 2017 00:03:16 +0200
schrieb Reindl Harald <h.reindl at thelounge.net>:

> Am 06.04.2017 um 22:15 schrieb Gary Evans:
> > I tried to copy
> >
> > UUID=B813-BB28  /boot/efi  vfat umask=0077 0  1
> >
> > for my DOS data partition but it caused Debian not to boot. This is
> > how it's configured:
> >
> > UUID=202E-E8BE  /DATADOS  vfat  umask=0077  0  1
> >
> > Where did this go awry? Please help.  
> 
> "caused Debian not to boot" is no valueable information
> http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#beprecise
> 
> "i tried to copy" - see above
> 
> UUID=B813-BB28 != UUID=202E-E8BE
> 
> if anything in /etc/fstab is not available at boot and not dfined
> with "nofail" you get a emergency shell because a as mandatory
> defined filesystem is missing - however, without a crystal ball
> nobody knows what you are trying to achive and what happens...

While you raise a good point with the "crystal ball", /boot/efi is
absolutely not essential for starting the system after the boot
loader, in a standard systemd configuration this should even automount
so missing it won't halt booting. As long as the contents of /boot/efi
were not touched, the system should boot fine, except it is an EFI
system and the "new" DOS partition has been marked as ESP (maybe by
cloning the partition entry).

But well, the crystal ball...

At a first glance this looks like /boot/efi has been reformatted to be
used for DOS, and then mounted as /DATADOS. Now the ESP is gone. So
actually, it's not Debian that's no longer booting, it's probably the
boot loader that no longer works. But that actually is not systemd's
fault, neither systemd has any responsibility whatsoever.

But the OP is coming here nevertheless, which suggests that indeed
systemd spools an error message that it can no longer mount /boot/efi,
and it's not been marked as nofail.

If this is the case, I can only imagine that the ESP has been
reformatted to act as a DOS partition and maybe the contents have been
copied back. The system only still boots, because a non-EFI boot loader
has been installed.

First suggestion: Don't touch the ESP. The ESP should even not be
visible to DOS afaict, so the OP probably started to fiddle around
until it "worked", and by that broke the rest.

-- 
Regards,
Kai

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