[arch-general] boot magically mounted on startup; reliable?

[james]

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.