[Bug 571444] Re: Boot hangs and unable to continue when automount disk in fstab is not available (Off or Disconnected)

[JEREMY B. KEITH]

This bug has gotten me also....  I have found the undocumented
workaround, but unfortunately after the damage has already been done.  I
have a system 5 states away, and only one person in the area that is 60
miles away.  In order for me to fix this, I must ask them to drive two
hours round trip just so they can go press the "s" key.  This is a real
killer on a headless system...

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/571444

Title:
  Boot hangs and unable to continue when automount disk in fstab is not
  available (Off or Disconnected)

Status in “mountall” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  On 10.04 Lucid server installations, if a filesystem that is specified in /etc/fstab cannot be mounted for some reason (USB disk not connected, partition deleted, samba share not availible etc.) the boot process hangs displaying
  "mountall: Filesystem could not be mounted: ..."
  Screenshot: http://launchpadlibrarian.net/48612932/Screenshot%20mountall%20hang.png
  The user is not informed what to do at this point.

  == WORKAROUND ==
  Press "s" to skip the missing filesystem and continue booting.
     - This workaround only works for the first missing drive. For more missing drives press alt-sysrq-i and edit your fstab to remove missing drives

  == ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION ==
  I have attached an external drive to mount on boot up of 10.04 server (Lucid).
  It's label is "WAD" and is located and mounted via the following fstab entry:

  LABEL=WAD          /mnt/WAD         auto         relatime,errors
  =remount-ro      0       2

  It's pretty generic and usually mounts either a ext3 or ext4 file
  system.

  However, If this drive is detached or powered down for some reason - Then the entire boot process hangs!
  There is no way to continue. You can switch terminals, But can not drop to any command line or even login.
  So you can't easily fix the problem either. ctrl-alt-del will initiate a shutdown/restart.
  Also booting into recovery mode exhibits the same problem.

  The only way I could recover this server (As I had no live cd available) was to hit alt-sysreq-i (Kill all tasks)
  The process's it killed are as follow: (This may give a hint to where it is hanging!?)
  udev
  portmap
  statd
  mountall
  plymouth
  Then it stated: General error mounting filesystems.
  And droped into a terminal (Thank God), So I could fix fstab (remove the external drive entry).

  I feel this is a pretty serious issue. It almost forced me to reinstall the server.
  (Only chance made me press Alt-SysRq-ScrollLock to give me Magic Key Help)

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