[ale] systemd - howto wait for _all_ fsck's to finish before starting system

[Phil Turmel]

Hi Steve,

The tool you need is a dependency on the mount in the affected services.

If you do

# systemctl list-units

you should find the precise name of your home directory's dynamic mount 
unit (automatically generated), typically "home.mount".

Create a supplement for cron with:

# systemctl edit cron.service

and put this in the supplement (aka override):

 > [Unit]
 > Requires=home.mount

Then your cron service won't start until /home is mounted.

Do similar to any other services affected.

On 12/1/23 08:00, Steve Tynor via Ale wrote:
> Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS.  I have a fairly large file system (/home) that 
> I wish to fsck at boot.  /etc/fstab has:
> 
>      /dev/disk/by-uuid/b4d368cd-e22e-4c85-b261-c0d785de344e /boot ext4 
> defaults 0 1
>      /dev/md/ricotta:1     /home     ext4 defaults,nofail,discard 0 2
> 
> On boot, the /boot filesystem get's fsck'd and then systemd seems to 
> immediately start the rest of the system in parallel with fsck'ing 
> /home.    This is a problem since I have some cron jobs, docker 
> containers and other services that rely on directories in /home. Those 
> services don't startup nicely if the fsck hasn't finished.
> 
> I'm guessing I could add [Wants] annotation to various .service files 
> (if I could figure out what base service to target), but 1) it seems 
> like this should work "out of the box", 2) editing half a dozen system 
> provided .service files seems fiddly and error prone.
> 
> I've not found any ready-made advice via google.   Which surprises me - 
> surely wanting to check _all_ file systems before starting the rest of 
> the system is not _that_ uncommon?
> 
> (please don't let this devolve into a systemd bashing thread - I don't 
> like systemd, but I've chosen to use Ubuntu and want to live within its 
> expectations...)
> 
> Thanks for any advice!
> 
> Steve