[arch-general] genfstab, fstab, seclabel, UUID vs. PARTUUID, and Arch Wiki
tl;dr - genfstab causes problems on my system, PARTUUIDs may lead to non-booting systems when used instead of UUIDs I had a problem installing Arch Linux on my box earlier this week, although I managed to resolve it. I was installing from the latest fedora live usb image, since my motherboard refuses to boot into efi mode with the Arch ISOs. Weird issues with genfstab: - When I run with the -U option, no UUIDs are placed in fstab. With the -L option, no labels. Am I correct in thinking that the "/dev/sdX" should be replaced with UUIDs and labels, respectively? - My first and second attempts both ended up with an fstab option called "seclabel" that I couldn't find any documentation for. The boot process stalled, saying it didn't understand "seclabel" or "seclabel" was missing an option, and kicked me to recovery. After removing "seclabel" that problem no longer occurred. Hopefully it's not too important... - I had duplicate entries, even running it only once on a clean installation. I started from scratch twice, and duplicated this problem. I cleaned the file up manually, but it was still odd. Possibly related to the fedora live usb. However, no drives were mounted twice and the blkid / lsblk output didn't show any problems. Also, on following the Arch Wiki's advice in the beginner's guide: I used PARTUUIDs in my fstab and gummiboot entries. My system wasn't able to boot with these, which I had gotten from "blkid". When I switched them out for regular UUIDs, I had no problems, and my system booted flawlessly. If someone could confirm that we should be using UUIDs, I'll change this on the wiki. If PARTUUIDs *should* work, can someone please explain why? Or maybe just vouch that they work on your system? I've never had success with them. I'll edit the wiki once this is verified, or otherwise resolved. Lastly, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Christian Demsar. I'm currently studying CS at Georgia Tech. I dabbled in linux a bit back in high school (only ubuntu and mint -- so not very deeply), but gave up until about last summer, and I've been mostly successful in learning the basics. -- vixsomnis
vixsomnis wrote in message <1415255453.3685895.187687373.7A25E4C3@webmail.messagingengine.com>:
Weird issues with genfstab: - When I run with the -U option, no UUIDs are placed in fstab. With the -L option, no labels. Am I correct in thinking that the "/dev/sdX" should be replaced with UUIDs and labels, respectively?
Yes.
Also, on following the Arch Wiki's advice in the beginner's guide: I used PARTUUIDs in my fstab and gummiboot entries. My system wasn't able to boot with these, which I had gotten from "blkid".
Where did it fails exactly? Was the initrd able to mount your slash?
When I switched them out for regular UUIDs, I had no problems, and my system booted flawlessly. If someone could confirm that we should be using UUIDs, I'll change this on the wiki. If PARTUUIDs *should* work, can someone please explain why? Or maybe just vouch that they work on your system? I've never had success with them. I'll edit the wiki once this is verified, or otherwise resolved.
For gummiboot I use title Arch Linux linux /vmlinuz-linux initrd /initramfs-linux.img options root=PARTUUID="986178da-85b0-4a7c-a0ec-600adfa32be7" and it works well. My fstab uses UUID though because I generate it with genfstab -U; but for mounting slash only the linux kernel options should matter at the initrd stage; up to the normal boot where slash will be remounted by systemd-remount-fs if it is in the fstab.
I don't know if it was able to mount root. Gummiboot was probably fine with the PARTUUID. The problem was in fstab. At any rate, have you heard of seclabel? Have you tried switching your fstab to PARTUUIDs? I was wrong about this being in the beginner's guide (it's actually on the fstab page), but I'm curious if it'll work. On Thu, Nov 6, 2014, at 05:39 AM, Damien Robert wrote:
vixsomnis wrote in message <1415255453.3685895.187687373.7A25E4C3@webmail.messagingengine.com>:
Weird issues with genfstab: - When I run with the -U option, no UUIDs are placed in fstab. With the -L option, no labels. Am I correct in thinking that the "/dev/sdX" should be replaced with UUIDs and labels, respectively?
Yes.
Also, on following the Arch Wiki's advice in the beginner's guide: I used PARTUUIDs in my fstab and gummiboot entries. My system wasn't able to boot with these, which I had gotten from "blkid".
Where did it fails exactly? Was the initrd able to mount your slash?
When I switched them out for regular UUIDs, I had no problems, and my system booted flawlessly. If someone could confirm that we should be using UUIDs, I'll change this on the wiki. If PARTUUIDs *should* work, can someone please explain why? Or maybe just vouch that they work on your system? I've never had success with them. I'll edit the wiki once this is verified, or otherwise resolved.
For gummiboot I use title Arch Linux linux /vmlinuz-linux initrd /initramfs-linux.img options root=PARTUUID="986178da-85b0-4a7c-a0ec-600adfa32be7" and it works well.
My fstab uses UUID though because I generate it with genfstab -U; but for mounting slash only the linux kernel options should matter at the initrd stage; up to the normal boot where slash will be remounted by systemd-remount-fs if it is in the fstab.
vixsomnis wrote in message <1415310458.3989983.188006897.47934212@webmail.messagingengine.com>:
I don't know if it was able to mount root. Gummiboot was probably fine with the PARTUUID. The problem was in fstab. At any rate, have you heard of seclabel?
Probably from SELinux which I don't use.
Have you tried switching your fstab to PARTUUIDs? I was wrong about this being in the beginner's guide (it's actually on the fstab page), but I'm curious if it'll work.
Yes, I tried it on a VM and it works. Anyway if genfstab did not work, there was probably a problem with detecting the partitions (it uses lsblk to list them); what does lsblk --fs gives you?
On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 12:30 AM, vixsomnis <vixsomnis@fastmail.com> wrote:
tl;dr - genfstab causes problems on my system, PARTUUIDs may lead to non-booting systems when used instead of UUIDs
I had a problem installing Arch Linux on my box earlier this week, although I managed to resolve it. I was installing from the latest fedora live usb image, since my motherboard refuses to boot into efi mode with the Arch ISOs.
Weird issues with genfstab: - When I run with the -U option, no UUIDs are placed in fstab. With the -L option, no labels. Am I correct in thinking that the "/dev/sdX" should be replaced with UUIDs and labels, respectively? - My first and second attempts both ended up with an fstab option called "seclabel" that I couldn't find any documentation for. The boot process stalled, saying it didn't understand "seclabel" or "seclabel" was missing an option, and kicked me to recovery. After removing "seclabel" that problem no longer occurred. Hopefully it's not too important... - I had duplicate entries, even running it only once on a clean installation. I started from scratch twice, and duplicated this problem. I cleaned the file up manually, but it was still odd. Possibly related to the fedora live usb. However, no drives were mounted twice and the blkid / lsblk output didn't show any problems.
Seems like Fedora is causing the duplicated mountpoints. see: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2011-August/402738.html and: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=701176 Also the seclabel thing, every reference I find for it has Fedora involved somewhere. ;) Someone else who had seclabel (on Arch Linux), same problem: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1360580 Fedora was their master OS, possibly they did the same thing you did? Anyway, they seem to have no problems after deleting it, or at least they never posted back about it...
Lastly, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Christian Demsar. I'm currently studying CS at Georgia Tech. I dabbled in linux a bit back in high school (only ubuntu and mint -- so not very deeply), but gave up until about last summer, and I've been mostly successful in learning the basics.
-- vixsomnis
Hi. :) I too have dabbled in high school (Ubuntu) and just started learning the basics last summer, with Archlinux. Going well so far. And I'm applying for Georgia Tech for next year...
Well, looks like you're right. In which case, it's a Fedora "feature". I'll pick another distro for liveUSB support next time I need to install on my system (which hopefully isn't soon). Anyway, I put a warning up on the bootstrapping page. Good luck with your application to GT. And if you decide to go here, make sure to check the age of the residence halls before signing up. Some of them haven't been renovated in a long time. -- vixsomnis On Sat, Nov 8, 2014, at 08:32 PM, Eli Schwartz wrote:
On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 12:30 AM, vixsomnis <vixsomnis@fastmail.com> wrote:
tl;dr - genfstab causes problems on my system, PARTUUIDs may lead to non-booting systems when used instead of UUIDs
I had a problem installing Arch Linux on my box earlier this week, although I managed to resolve it. I was installing from the latest fedora live usb image, since my motherboard refuses to boot into efi mode with the Arch ISOs.
Weird issues with genfstab: - When I run with the -U option, no UUIDs are placed in fstab. With the -L option, no labels. Am I correct in thinking that the "/dev/sdX" should be replaced with UUIDs and labels, respectively? - My first and second attempts both ended up with an fstab option called "seclabel" that I couldn't find any documentation for. The boot process stalled, saying it didn't understand "seclabel" or "seclabel" was missing an option, and kicked me to recovery. After removing "seclabel" that problem no longer occurred. Hopefully it's not too important... - I had duplicate entries, even running it only once on a clean installation. I started from scratch twice, and duplicated this problem. I cleaned the file up manually, but it was still odd. Possibly related to the fedora live usb. However, no drives were mounted twice and the blkid / lsblk output didn't show any problems.
Seems like Fedora is causing the duplicated mountpoints.
see: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2011-August/402738.html and: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=701176
Also the seclabel thing, every reference I find for it has Fedora involved somewhere. ;)
Someone else who had seclabel (on Arch Linux), same problem: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1360580 Fedora was their master OS, possibly they did the same thing you did? Anyway, they seem to have no problems after deleting it, or at least they never posted back about it...
Lastly, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Christian Demsar. I'm currently studying CS at Georgia Tech. I dabbled in linux a bit back in high school (only ubuntu and mint -- so not very deeply), but gave up until about last summer, and I've been mostly successful in learning the basics.
-- vixsomnis
Hi. :) I too have dabbled in high school (Ubuntu) and just started learning the basics last summer, with Archlinux. Going well so far. And I'm applying for Georgia Tech for next year...
participants (3)
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Damien Robert
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Eli Schwartz
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vixsomnis