Re: /etc/fstab question (problem)?
On Tue 18 Apr 2023 at 21:12:33 (-0400), Default User wrote:
>
> (Not so) fun fact: Clonezilla always refuses to back up swap
> partitions. I don't know why.
It's not clear to me how you could restore the entire rest of the
system to the state it was in when you made your backup of swap.
So the backup copy becomes instantly useless except for forensics
or theft, ie scanning for fragments of text, passwords etc.
That's why I encrypt my swap partitions with a random key.
> Several different approaches to solve the problem have been suggested.
> I think I will wait until tomorrow and ponder the options, before
> performing "surgery".
If you're prepared to reboot, it should be straightforward, but there
is one factor I haven't seen mentioned, and that's to do with cleaning.
If you add the "lost line" back into fstab:
UUID=6a105a72-f5d5-441b-b926-1e405151ee84 /tmp ext4 defaults 0 2
then when the system starts up, partition 5 will be mounted onto
/tmp in the root filesystem, and then it'll be cleaned of any files
left over from the last time it was used. It might be a long, long
time since you used it so there could conceivably be files that you
want to check out.
So, I would mount partition 5 on /mnt and look it over. Yes, you've
backed up the partition, but you might never look at that, whereas
this is something you can do straightaway.
That aspect was already mentioned by DbB. But there is one further
point to make. AIUI, cleaning will be carried out on /tmp after the
partition (5) has been mounted. It wouldn't make sense otherwise.
But look at your usage of /tmp now—that is, the /tmp in the root
partition. If it contains some large files when you shut down in
preparation to change fstab, then those files, sitting on /, will
never get cleaned. They'll be hidden by mounting partition 5 on
top of them, and use disk space for ever.
So—I would clean /tmp as best you can before you close down, then
boot in single user mode, clean anything still remaining in /tmp,
edit your fstab, and then reboot.
> Finally, after the current situation is resolved, I would still like to
> know what caused the problem in the first place. I would really like to
> not have it happen again!
It looks as if someone edited the entries with tabs to make it line up
neatly, removed the installers comments, and accidentally removed the
/tmp line too. I don't know of any software that would do that to fstab.
Cheers,
David.
Reply to: