Bug#838887: please dont bomb out on nofail option
On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 02:58:58PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Mon, 2016-09-26 at 07:02 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> > Package: initramfs-tools
> > Severity: wishlist
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > when I looked for the last time (a few months ago), fstab entries
> > parsed by initramfs-tools or in initramfs MUST NOT contain the
> > "nofail" option.
>
> All entries are parsed. But I suppose you mean the entries which are
> actually processed, which are: /usr
And root, right?
> And 'nofail' would make no sense for /usr, so I don't understand
> why you would want to use it there.
I want to use it anywhere so that the system boots as far as it will
go, in the hope that it will come up so far that actual help is
possible. Unconditionally dropping to a rescue shell on the local
console is the least probable variant of "helpful".
> [...]
> > Please consider tweaking initramfs-tools so that "nofail" can be in
> > all lines, with it being ignored in initramfs.
>
> There's nothing we do that would reject 'nofail', and both busybox and
> klibc implementations of mount seem to ignore it. (However I don't
> currently have a test VM with separate /usr so I didn't test this
> completely.)
You're right. "nofail" is ignored, at least in sid.
I'm leaving this bug report open since I'd really love initramfs-tools
to continue to try booting even if mounting /usr fails. Currently,
this is what happens even if nofail is set on /usr:
|Begin: Running /scripts/local-block ... done.
|done.
|Gave up waiting for /usr device. Common problems:
| - Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
| - Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
| - Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
|ALERT! /dev/vdb does not exist. Dropping to a shell!
|BusyBox v1.22.1 (Debian 1:1.22.0-19) built-in shell (ash)
|Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
|(initramfs)
I guess this would also defeat mechanisms placed in the initramfs such
as an emergency ssh daemon (something which I planned to implement for
a decade now and never have gotten around to actually doing it).
Greetings
Marc
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