[arch-general] boot magically mounted on startup; reliable?
Hello!
On my latest install I forgot to mount the boot partition during the installation process, which prompted me to come back on a few of the steps after setting up the root filesystem.
Everything works great (with systemd-boot) but I just remembered one thing I missed was adding an entry in fstab for /boot. However, it does seem that systemd does mount _something_ automatically:
$ mount | grep boot systemd-1 on /boot type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=50,pgrp=1,timeout=120,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=10794)
and that _something_ seems to be the same as the boot partition:
$ sudo ls -al /boot total 58408 drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 . drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4096 Jul 9 11:02 .. drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Jul 9 10:54 EFI drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Jul 9 21:55 'System Volume Information' -rwx------ 1 root root 34938914 Jul 19 18:14 initramfs-linux-fallback.img -rwx------ 1 root root 9030240 Jul 19 18:14 initramfs-linux.img -rwx------ 1 root root 5174272 May 10 21:27 intel-ucode.img drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Jul 26 08:47 loader -rwx------ 1 root root 10636800 Jul 19 18:14 vmlinuz-linux
$ sudo mount /dev/nvme1n1p1 /mnt
$ sudo ls -al /mnt total 58408 drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 . drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4096 Jul 9 11:02 .. drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Jul 9 10:54 EFI drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Jul 9 21:55 'System Volume Information' -rwx------ 1 root root 34938914 Jul 19 18:14 initramfs-linux-fallback.img -rwx------ 1 root root 9030240 Jul 19 18:14 initramfs-linux.img -rwx------ 1 root root 5174272 May 10 21:27 intel-ucode.img drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Jul 26 08:47 loader -rwx------ 1 root root 10636800 Jul 19 18:14 vmlinuz-linux
I have trouble finding the documentation of this behavior and I'd like to know if it can be relied upon or I should add an entry manually.
Check out man systemd-gpt-auto-generator, that's probably why.
On 22/07/26 09:34am, Vasile Vilvoiu via arch-general wrote:
Hello!
On my latest install I forgot to mount the boot partition during the installation process, which prompted me to come back on a few of the steps after setting up the root filesystem.
Everything works great (with systemd-boot) but I just remembered one thing I missed was adding an entry in fstab for /boot. However, it does seem that systemd does mount _something_ automatically:
$ mount | grep boot systemd-1 on /boot type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=50,pgrp=1,timeout=120,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=10794)
and that _something_ seems to be the same as the boot partition:
$ sudo ls -al /boot total 58408 drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 . drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4096 Jul 9 11:02 .. drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Jul 9 10:54 EFI drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Jul 9 21:55 'System Volume Information' -rwx------ 1 root root 34938914 Jul 19 18:14 initramfs-linux-fallback.img -rwx------ 1 root root 9030240 Jul 19 18:14 initramfs-linux.img -rwx------ 1 root root 5174272 May 10 21:27 intel-ucode.img drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Jul 26 08:47 loader -rwx------ 1 root root 10636800 Jul 19 18:14 vmlinuz-linux
$ sudo mount /dev/nvme1n1p1 /mnt
$ sudo ls -al /mnt total 58408 drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 . drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4096 Jul 9 11:02 .. drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Jul 9 10:54 EFI drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Jul 9 21:55 'System Volume Information' -rwx------ 1 root root 34938914 Jul 19 18:14 initramfs-linux-fallback.img -rwx------ 1 root root 9030240 Jul 19 18:14 initramfs-linux.img -rwx------ 1 root root 5174272 May 10 21:27 intel-ucode.img drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Jul 26 08:47 loader -rwx------ 1 root root 10636800 Jul 19 18:14 vmlinuz-linux
I have trouble finding the documentation of this behavior and I'd like to know if it can be relied upon or I should add an entry manually.
-- Best regards, Vasile Vilvoiu
Hi,
I'm not sure about the automatic behaviour either but I tend to think you should probably do this manually. It shouldn't cause any problems, and it could help avert problems if this automatic behaviour turns out not to be reliable.
participants (3)
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james
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Max Gautier
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Vasile Vilvoiu