Boot hangs at "Device Initialisation"

[Arch_Enemy]

Good Day.

LMDE3, installed on an older disk, after performing and update and installing a script for my trackball I reboot and install additional packages. After installing the packages I do a reboot and it Hang on boot, giving 2 messages “A start job is running for device initialisation” and “Looking for device (UUID)” They time out and I am dropped to an Emergency shell, but I can’t do anything.

So, I used a much newer disk; same procedure, same result.

I set the disks up with a ~30G partition for the system files, and the remainder of the disk as /home. SDA1 mounts and loads just fine, SDA2 is lost somewhere. Any ideas?

[Arch_Enemy]

More info: I took my Live USB and had a poke around the file system as a superuser. I looked at fstab to check the UUIDs and they are correct; I also rebooted and the UUID of the partition that won't mount is listed correctly in the 'initialisation' message. It says it mounts /home, but it is mounting from the root directory, and since the partition is not mounted there are no files. I cannot run systemctl or journalctl since I am not logged in, even through the "Emergency shell". Since my files aren't mounted, I have no identity and no access.

[xenopeek]

Do you have a link to the trackball script and list of additional packages you installed?

To narrow down on what component is the cause of this will take some more time. Time consuming but something like:
1. install afresh
2. reboot and verify still works
3. update
4. reboot and verify still works
5. add trackball script
6. reboot and verify still works
7. add one additional package
8. reboot and verify still works
9. repeat step 7 and 8 till all additional packages installed

[Arch_Enemy]

We haven't had a lot of work, and it's raining...again! and that was just what I was going to do!

I have done this same thing with the same packages in Manjaro, Arch, and Mint and never had this happen before. Even when I tried straight Debian this didn't happen. I'm stumped at what could be making the 2nd partition 'disappear'. I went through GURB as well but it only mentions the partition with the main body of the OS.

Thanks. Will do.

[Arch_Enemy]

I reloaded from scratch, and installed packages in groups of 5. I do a lot of data recovery for fun and profit, so I was loading up the forensics tasks: forensics-all, forensics-extra, and forensics-GUI. THis time I did not use the tasks to load them, and I only loaded the file recovery pieces without the heavy-duty disk analyzers. Then I rebooted and installed the few packages I have that I have to force to install, and everything so far is right with the world.

Must be something in the Forensics disk utilities that is not allowing GURB to find the second partition. Since this is an "experimental" install, I'm not going to go any further, and see if I can break it some other way...

[Cwmwd24]

I think I have the same problem after upgrading from LMDE2, boot hangs when mounting swap and home (on the same disk as root). However, I can get to the normal desktop by selecting the "recovery mode" option in GRUB and then pressing Ctrl-D at the prompt. In this way I can change journalctl to persistent mode and grab a log of the error. I've also double-checked the UUIDs in fstab and they match what lsblk has. Commenting out the swap partition in fstab does not help either, still hangs on home.

Does this tally with your issue?

If anyone's interested here are the logs and some system info...

journalctl -x -b -1 : http://termbin.com/5w24
lsblk -f : http://termbin.com/s3wx
cat /etc/fstab : http://termbin.com/eijd
inxi -Fxzc0 : http://termbin.com/njjs

[xenopeek]

That looks similar. Here's the relevant bits from your journal:

During boot it shows a timeout for mounting your home partition (2fb746bb-dd4a-4bd0-a806-d5ff68f78ae4):

Code: Select all

Oct 06 16:39:37 cwmwd-laptop kernel: ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
Oct 06 16:39:37 cwmwd-laptop kernel: ata1.00: supports DRM functions and may not be fully accessible
Oct 06 16:39:37 cwmwd-laptop kernel: ata1.00: ATA-10: Crucial_CT275MX300SSD1,  M0CR040, max UDMA/133
Oct 06 16:39:37 cwmwd-laptop kernel: ata1.00: 537234768 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA
Oct 06 16:39:37 cwmwd-laptop kernel: ata1.00: supports DRM functions and may not be fully accessible
Oct 06 16:39:37 cwmwd-laptop kernel: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
Oct 06 16:39:37 cwmwd-laptop kernel: scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      Crucial_CT275MX3 R040 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5

8<---- cut part not relevant ---->8

Oct 06 16:41:07 cwmwd-laptop systemd[1]: dev-disk-by\x2duuid-2fb746bb\x2ddd4a\x2d4bd0\x2da806\x2dd5ff68f78ae4.device: Job dev-disk-by\x2duuid-2fb746bb\x2ddd4a\x2d4bd0\x2da806\x2dd5ff68f78ae4.device/start timed out.
Oct 06 16:41:07 cwmwd-laptop systemd[1]: Timed out waiting for device dev-disk-by\x2duuid-2fb746bb\x2ddd4a\x2d4bd0\x2da806\x2dd5ff68f78ae4.device.
-- Subject: Unit dev-disk-by\x2duuid-2fb746bb\x2ddd4a\x2d4bd0\x2da806\x2dd5ff68f78ae4.device has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
-- 
-- Unit dev-disk-by\x2duuid-2fb746bb\x2ddd4a\x2d4bd0\x2da806\x2dd5ff68f78ae4.device has failed.
-- 
-- The result is timeout.
Oct 06 16:41:07 cwmwd-laptop systemd[1]: Dependency failed for /home.
-- Subject: Unit home.mount has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
-- 
-- Unit home.mount has failed.
-- 
-- The result is dependency.
Oct 06 16:41:07 cwmwd-laptop systemd[1]: Dependency failed for Local File Systems.
-- Subject: Unit local-fs.target has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
-- 
-- Unit local-fs.target has failed.
-- 
-- The result is dependency.

As you continue boot from the failure, it doesn't timeout:

Code: Select all

Oct 06 16:41:08 cwmwd-laptop systemd[1]: Found device Crucial_CT275MX300SSD1 4.
-- Subject: Unit dev-disk-by\x2duuid-2fb746bb\x2ddd4a\x2d4bd0\x2da806\x2dd5ff68f78ae4.device has finished start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
-- 
-- Unit dev-disk-by\x2duuid-2fb746bb\x2ddd4a\x2d4bd0\x2da806\x2dd5ff68f78ae4.device has finished starting up.
-- 
-- The start-up result is done.
Oct 06 16:41:08 cwmwd-laptop systemd[1]: Mounting /home...
-- Subject: Unit home.mount has begun start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
-- 
-- Unit home.mount has begun starting up.

[Cwmwd24]

==UPDATE==
Fresh install from ISO worked without a hitch, guessing original problem was due to something odd leftover after trying to upgrade from LMDE2.

Thanks for looking over the problem. Not sure how to proceed from here, I find it weird that selecting the "rescue" boot option boots without any errors at all into single-user mode and pressing Ctrl-D to proceed to multi-user goes without a hitch and drops me to the graphical login screen. The "sysvinit" boot option also completes but with video problems at the end, could probably work on that but I'd rather get the systemd boot to work.

Is there a way to increase the timeout for home.mount to see if that helps at all? Why a SSD would need more time to mount two partitions is beyond me though .

I'll try the LMDE3 ISO later on today and see if a fresh install does the same, otherwise I'll have to restore my backups and rollback the upgrade to LMDE2 using Timeshift and live with not being to continue with LMDE next year: right now having a working machine is more important to me than having the latest version.