Bug#747258: system boot slowed down by bad /etc/crypttab

[intrigeri]

Control: retitle -1 Waits for missing devices listed in /etc/crypttab to appear, which slows down system boot

Hi Harald,

Harald Dunkel wrote (06 May 2014 20:24:55 GMT) :
> If there are some forgotten entries in /etc/crypttab (not mentioned
> in /etc/fstab), then system boot takes an awful lot of time.
> The old sysv-init didn't care.
> After cleaning up /etc/crypttab the time needed for booting was back
> to normal.

Thanks for reporting this to Debian.

It seems to me that systemd is trying to do exactly what you're asking
here: it is told to set up the crypt mappings you've asked, and it has
no way to know how long it may take for the underlying device to
appear... so it is waiting until some timeout expires. Apparently this
timeout is longer than the one sysvinit was using, which is probably
good in some cases, and bad in some others.

So, I'm inclined to tag this bug wontfix, or to close it. I'll let the
maintainers make the decision, though.

(The only reason why it actually completes the boot, I guess, is
because the filesystems hosted on the missing encrypted devices are
not listed in fstab.)

Cheers,
--
intrigeri