Mount order after systemd update

[Martin Manns <mmanns@gmx.net>]

Dear all

After switching to systemd, I would like to get back the following
behavior:

Mount multiple lvm-crypt volumes with password entry on startup.
Mount several loopback devices from files within these volumes.

With sysvinit, I had put the mount order into /etc/fstab and everything
worked as expected.

After switching to systemd, mount operations seem to be spawned in
parallel. This has the following consequences:

1) I am never sure which device requests password entry first.
Therefore, password choice is a gamble. Furthermore, password entry on
startup looks weird because some weird red moving stars are shown
instead of a prompt.

2) If I wait for some time before entering all passwords then some
kind of timeout seems to kick in and the volume is not mounted at all.
It is actually hard to enter everything without any timeout.

3) If a loopback device is mounted before a preceding encrypted
device then it obviously fails. However, this prevents correct startup
and gives me an emergency console.


This is probably a configuration issue. However, I was not able to
find a good solution with google (between all the systemd rants).

I can think of the following alternative solutions (without switching
back to sysvinit):

* Disable concurrency in mount operations, i.e. mounts go in order
  through the devices in etc/fstab and wait for each other without a
  fixed timeout.

* Set up a precedence graph for concurrent mounts with timeout options
  on the edges.

Do you know an easy(!) way to achieve one of these solutions or is
there a better way of getting things fixed?

Martin