/boot partition is not mounted (still works fine), adding to `/etc/fstab` failes boot

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1

Hi there,
I am new to Manjaro (migrated from ubuntu) and I have Installed Iinstalled Xfce version.

I dont have a problem but a question.

I have Two disks 120GB-SSD & 1TB-HDD, So while install i have given root installation in SSD & my Home partition into HDD.

(BIOS/MBR)

sda      8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
└─sda1   8:1    0 931.5G  0 part /home

sdb      8:16   0 119.2G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   0   400M  0 part 
├─sdb2   8:18   0     8M  0 part 
└─sdb3   8:19   0 118.8G  0 part /

so as you can see the root and home partition is mounted perfectly and works fine, BUT the /boot partition which is /dev/sdb1 is not mounted and it’s also not in the /etc/fstab file.

# <file system>             <mount point>  <type>  <options>  <dump>  <pass>
UUID=9c3be252-accf-455f-b905-102693905eb6 /home          ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=01321de3-0cd5-43af-8b16-42de85d29e4b /              ext4    defaults,noatime 0 1
tmpfs                                     /tmp           tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

So my Actual Question Is HOW CAN THIS WORK ???

When I mounted /dev/sdb1 in /boot and created fstab, The Syatem failed to boot and i was booted into tty terminal for recovery. fortunately i ahd backup so i reverted it. the failed fstab looked like this

# /dev/sdb3
UUID=01321de3-0cd5-43af-8b16-42de85d29e4b	/         	ext4      	rw,noatime0 1

# tracefs
tracefs             	/sys/kernel/debug/tracing	tracefs   	rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec	0 0

# tracefs
tracefs             	/sys/kernel/tracing	tracefs   	rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec	0 0

# gvfsd-fuse
gvfsd-fuse          	/run/user/1000/gvfs	fuse.gvfsd-fuse	rw,nosuid,nodev,user_id=1000,group_id=1000	0 0

# /dev/sda1
UUID=9c3be252-accf-455f-b905-102693905eb6	/home     	ext4      	rw,noatime0 2

# /dev/sdb1
UUID=132e7105-e997-4c39-98ab-64e768e906cf	/boot     	ext4      	rw,relatime,stripe=4	0 2

I dont Understand How this is possible ??? The Error I am getting Is…

[FAILED] Failed to start remount root and kernal file system
[FAILED] failed to mount /home
[DEPEND] dependency failed for local filesysystem
[FAILED] failed to mount /run/user/1000/gvfs
2

Isn’t the boot partition supposed to be vfat instead of ext4, bios or efi? Here is how mine looks.

UUID=FB82-2D35                            /boot/efi      vfat    umask=0077 0 2

What is the output of lsblk -f

3 
$ lsblk -f

NAME   FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                                           
└─sda1 ext4   1.0         9c3be252-accf-455f-b905-102693905eb6  868.1G     0% /home
sdb                                                                           
├─sdb1 ext4   1.0         132e7105-e997-4c39-98ab-64e768e906cf                
├─sdb2                                                                        
└─sdb3 ext4   1.0         01321de3-0cd5-43af-8b16-42de85d29e4b  102.7G     7% /

the currently boot partition is ext4 and works fine…

4

If a mount point doesn’t exist, it will simply be a directory. /boot is a plain directory on your root filesystem. GRUB can open the ext4 filesystem and find it’s files and the kernel images it has to load in the boot directory

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=251983

5

The /boot partition, if separate from the root filesystem ─ and for the record, we’re not talking of the EFI system partition here (which would be mounted at /boot/efi instead) ─ does not need to be mounted at runtime. It only contains the compressed kernel images and the boot loader configuration, and it is mounted and accessed by GRUB during the first phase of the boot process, but this mount is discarded later on, once the kernel has been decompressed in RAM and takes control of the machine.

However, you do have to mount it if you’re going to be updating your system, because pacman ─ or pamac, whichever you use ─ needs to be able to delete the outgoing kernel images and initramfss, and install the new ones in their stead. If you don’t mount that partition at /boot, then the new kernels and initramfss will simply be written to the /boot directory, which means that they will be on the root filesystem itself.

6

so is it okay to delete that partition and just keep my bootloader & kernals in /boot directory ?

1 Like
7

If that directory already contains kernels and a GRUB directory, then yes. But make sure that you’re not deleting the EFI system partition instead! :thinking:

8

yeah i moved them to /boot directory and ran grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg, works fine.

1 Like
9

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