Strange problem with new installation -- POSSIBLY runit related

03 July 2018, 21:20:44

I made a new installation in an old pc (2core celeron) for a kid. I started with basestrap .... runit.
Built the whole thing with what I wanted him to have as first exposure, then made the rest of the disk as /home and /swap

Once I finished I took it to him, set the whole thing up and was copying /home to /mnt/home and made a mistake on fstab.

The mistake was (in a transitions stage copying home to the /home partition) that instead of shift 3 = # I typed 3, saved /fstab and rebooted. I didn't have a stick with another system with me, but the system would go on emergency mode and be read-only, I couldn't edit fstab or do anything to it. It was locked till I get back with a stick to fix it.

I've never encountered something like this before and I don't know if it is an artix peculiarity, or runit, I am leaning towards the later.
I think it sticks to stage one in read only mode and does not mount anything write capable.

Interesting but what good is an emergency mode to a system you can not affect? You can only identify the problem and realize what went wrong.

The line of the home partition reads 3UUID=****** /home ext4 .... etc etc... instead of #UUID=......
in case anyone wants to reproduce the problem, having a second system to boot handy.

Re: Strange problem with new installation -- POSSIBLY runit related

Reply #1 – 03 July 2018, 23:07:13

While I don't think this behaviour is runit-exclusive, all partitions are mounted in read-only until fstab is successfully read.

Quote from: fungalnet – on 03 July 2018, 21:20:44

Interesting but what good is an emergency mode to a system you can not affect? You can only identify the problem and realize what went wrong.

You can just remount it manually in rw using the mount command. That's what the emergency shells are for.

Re: Strange problem with new installation -- POSSIBLY runit related

Reply #2 – 04 July 2018, 11:00:31

Thank you, since nothing else seemed to work I didn't think that mount would, I didn't know. It makes sense, mount is not writing anything or altering the system.