Bug#756103: systemd should be more forgiving of fstab errors

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 11 aug 14, 23:53:54, Michael Biebl wrote:
> Am 11.08.2014 23:35, schrieb Andrei POPESCU:
> > I have been thinking about this incident since then and watching all the 
> > "system doesn't boot due to fstab errors" reports (I'm subscribed to 
> > both -user and -pkg-systemd-maintainers).
> > 
> > I'm not sure it's a good idea to just fail the boot completely whenever 
> > there are errors like mine in fstab, but instead it would be much 
> > friendlier if systemd would try to bring up as much of the system as 
> > possible and start the emergency console only if e.g. / and /usr are 
> > missing.
> 
> 
> I already commented on that. I think it's wrong to just continue booting
> and starting potentially critical services.
> How is systemd supposed to know which file systems are vital?
 
It can't, of course (nor should it), unless receiving enough information 
from the admin, but see below.

> You might have database on separate partitions and you might risk losing
> data if the services are started but the partitions aren't available.

I understand these concerns, however:

1. it seems very brittle to me that a wrong fstab entry is capable of 
blocking the entire boot. This will be mitigated once emergency mode is 
fixed, but still won't be much comfort for headless systems.

2. sysv-rc would not stop either, so this would not be a regression

Another possibility would be if admins could designate specific 
filesystems as critical for booting with a fstab parameter like 
'bootwait', where systemd stops if that particular filesystem couldn't 
be mounted.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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