systemd fails to boot most of the time

[Tom H]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 12:07 AM, Teresa e Junior
<teresaejunior at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My current Ubuntu 16.10 system is constantly failing to boot, and it seems
> systemd is failing to recognize my fstab partitions. Sometimes, booting
> works normally, but most times it does not, and I'm left in Emergency mode.
> I have to reboot many many times until it eventually works. Here are the
> most relevant lines from the boot log:
>
> $ egrep 'Timed out|Dependency' journalctl-xb.txt | sed 's/.*\[1]: //'
> Timed out waiting for device dev-sda5.device.
> Dependency failed for Swap Partition.
> Timed out waiting for device
> dev-disk-by\x2duuid-1aea5e72\x2d3c71\x2d4f17\x2db590\x2d3710088a1b46.device.
> Dependency failed for /home.
> Dependency failed for Local File Systems.
> Dependency failed for File System Check on
> /dev/disk/by-uuid/1aea5e72-3c71-4f17-b590-3710088a1b46.
> Timed out waiting for device dev-disk-by\x2duuid-5CA4\x2d3896.device.
> Dependency failed for File System Check on /dev/disk/by-uuid/5CA4-3896.
> Dependency failed for /boot/efi.
> Timed out waiting for device
> dev-disk-by\x2duuid-419caf7b\x2dd856\x2d4668\x2db02f\x2de8d0a292e768.device.
> Dependency failed for
> /dev/disk/by-uuid/419caf7b-d856-4668-b02f-e8d0a292e768.
> Dependency failed for Swap.
>
> As you can see, "dependencies fail" for both /boot/efi, /home, and swap.
>
> Complete boot log from Emergency mode: http://pastebin.com/620Gvd4b
> The contents of my /etc/fstab: http://pastebin.com/Nuw1ia0y
> The output from `sudo blkid`: http://pastebin.com/WTdF26kM

In future, please put short outputs like blkid and fstab in your email.

My first thought is to fsck your filesystems (although this wouldn't
explain the swap failure).

My second thought is to rebuild your current initramfs:

cd /boot
update-initramfs -ut -k $(name -r)

My third thought is to check the GUID types of your partitions ("Code" column):

gdisk -l /dev/sda

In theory (and I've tested it and it worked on my laptop), you can set
(with "t" in "gdisk /dev/sda")

ef00 /boot/efi
8200 swap
8302 /home
8304 / (for amd64)

and they'll all be mounted without an entry in "/etc/fstab"

No fourth thought :(

Except perhaps a question: are the .device, .mount, or .swap units
auto-generated by systemd or are you providing them under /lib or
/etc?