Boot broken after fresh install + fstab tweak

Heya,

Just re-installed my desktop using the latest snapshot (20250311).

Un-tar’d my dotfiles, set my hostname, added my second disk to /etc/fstab,

UUID=<SOMETHING>  /home/peniblec/media    xfs    user,exec  0  0

… and then restarted to a black screen. Logged in on tty1, panicked a bit seeing my $HOME absent, glanced at the journal,

Mar 12 23:21:36 amdahl30 kernel: audit: type=1305 audit(1741818096.965:181): op=set audit_pid=0 old=1124 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=unconfined res=1
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 kernel: audit: type=1305 audit(1741818097.020:182): op=set audit_enabled=0 old=1 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=unconfined res=1
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 auditctl[4085]: enabled 0
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 auditctl[4085]: failure 1
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 auditctl[4085]: pid 0
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 auditctl[4085]: rate_limit 0
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 auditctl[4085]: backlog_limit 64
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 auditctl[4085]: lost 0
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 auditctl[4085]: backlog 1
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 auditctl[4085]: backlog_wait_time 60000
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 auditctl[4085]: backlog_wait_time_actual 0
Mar 12 23:21:37 amdahl30 auditctl[4085]: No rules

… figured I’d try SELINUX=disabled in /etc/selinux/config, restarted, and now:

  • a regular restart remains stuck at the splash screen, before the login manager; I can’t seem to open a TTY and I can’t find a trace of these boots in the logs;
  • a restart using GRUB’s “rescue mode” successfully starts the graphical session.

I guess I’m left with these questions:

  1. is there a fine manual I should have read about SELinux vs arbitrary fstab additions, or am I conflating correlation with causation?
  2. should I bother trying to fix my mess (so that I can boot (a) without rescue mode (b) with SELinux enabled), or just re-re-install?

Happy to share more logs if that can help; going to hit the hay for now - hadn’t seen that sucker punch coming, or I would have waited for a more opportune time before re-installing. Thanks for your time.

Morning :bowing_man:

  • a restart using “rescue mode” in GRUB’s advanced options successfully starts the graphical session.

(I should add: “… with ~/media properly mounted”, to dispel doubt about the fstab entry being well-formed)

  1. is there a fine manual I should have read about SELinux vs arbitrary fstab additions, or am I conflating correlation with causation?

Working theory, since previous installation was from November, so Tumbleweed switched to SELinux: that second disk lacks some metadata that SELinux wants. Not sure what the remediation is yet - sprinkling the right (fs)context mount option in fstab, running a command to label the disk, adding a /.autorelabel file… much reading to do.

SELINUX=disabled in /etc/selinux/config

(FWIW, permissive yields the same results as enforcing: home is not mounted)

This usually hints at the video (driver) issues.

Working theory, since previous installation was from November, so Tumbleweed switched to SELinux: that second disk lacks some metadata that SELinux wants. Not sure what the remediation is yet - sprinkling the right (fs)context mount option in fstab, running a command to label the disk, adding a /.autorelabel file… much reading to do.

OK, two elements that invalidate this theory, or at least complicate the picture:

  1. restoring SELinux (SELINUX=enforcing), commenting out the fstab entry, then rebooting, yields the same (initial) problem: no login manager, can switch to tty1, no home mounted; infuriatingly, logs are somewhat hard to preserve (all traces of journalctl disappear after a reboot; must write them to e.g. /etc since nothing else seems to be mounted correctly, and network is not started, so no way to exfiltrate); they do show some ominous messages:

     systemd-fstab-generator[714]: Failed to open /etc/fstab: Permission denied
     kernel: audit: type=1400 audit(1741850845.945:3): avc:  denied  { read } for  pid=714 comm="systemd-fstab-g" name="fstab" dev="sda2" ino=216168 scontext=system_u:system_r:systemd_fstab_generator_t:s0 tcontext=unconfined_u:object_r:cache_home_t:s0 tclass=file permissive=0
     (sd-exec-[709]: /usr/lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-fstab-generator failed with exit status 1.
     systemd-gpt-auto-generator[716]: Failed to parse fstab: Permission denied
     kernel: audit: type=1400 audit(1741850845.960:4): avc:  denied  { read } for  pid=716 comm="systemd-gpt-aut" name="fstab" dev="sda2" ino=216168 scontext=system_u:system_r:systemd_gpt_generator_t:s0 tcontext=unconfined_u:object_r:cache_home_t:s0 tclass=file permissive=0
     kernel: audit: type=1400 audit(1741850845.960:5): avc:  denied  { read } for  pid=716 comm="systemd-gpt-aut" name="fstab" dev="sda2" ino=216168 scontext=system_u:system_r:systemd_gpt_generator_t:s0 tcontext=unconfined_u:object_r:cache_home_t:s0 tclass=file permissive=0
     (sd-exec-[709]: /usr/lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-gpt-auto-generator failed with exit status 1.
    
  2. keeping SELinux disabled and the fstab entry commented out, then rebooting, still requires me to go through rescue mode; otherwise I still get stuck before the login manager with not even a TTY.

That’ll be all for this morning on my side.

I don’t want to dismiss this outright, but given the journalctl evidence that SELinux prevents systemd from reading fstab, I think I’ll keep looking on the SELinux side before looking into video drivers - which worked fine the first handful of boots after re-installation, so not sure how the video drivers would have become messed up? I didn’t have the time to do much damage after the install.

(The worst I can think of, which I omitted in my OP, was zypper source-install --build-deps-only emacs which does install a host of weird packages, some of which could conceivably mess with video drivers? :person_shrugging:)

FWIW, after waiting long enough at the splash screen I get when I (a) disabling SELinux (b) doing a non-rescue boot, I finally got a more informative screen. Again, SELinux seems to be involved - even though it is disabled.

So refined working theory: I botched /etc/fstab metadata by editing it (perhaps because I used Emacs’s /sudoedit:: method?). Not sure how to fix this - sudo restorecon /etc/fstab did not help. Might try to re-re-install - as i said, didn’t get the opportunity to do much on this frehs re-installation anyway.

So refined working theory: I botched /etc/fstab metadata by editing it (perhaps because I used Emacs’s /sudoedit:: method?). Not sure how to fix this - sudo restorecon /etc/fstab did not help. Might try to re-re-install - as i said, didn’t get the opportunity to do much on this frehs re-installation anyway.

Clobbered /var/log/zypp/history with a misplaced tee :person_facepalming: so figured a reⁿinstall was in order. Opted out of all security modules in the installer, re-ran everything I ran yesterday.

Lightly de-noised history FTR (possibly out-of-order: some commands run in the TTY, others in the GUI):

tar xvf /run/media/peniblec/[…disk label…]/bkp.amdahl30.2025-03-13.tgz 
sudo zypper source-install --build-deps-only emacs
rm -rf .emacs .emacs.d/
emacs &
sudo localectl set-x11-keymap fr pc105 latin9 ctrl:nocaps
sudo zypper install htop ripgrep mpv 
sudo hostnamectl hostname amdahl30
setfacl -m u:sddm:x ~/
setfacl -m u:sddm:r ~/.face.icon 
sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=mdns
sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=mdns --permanent 
mkdir media
mount media
rmdir Music/
ln -sv media/music Music

(Not pictured:

  • letting the Plasma tray widget mount the /run/media disk where the backup tarball lives;
  • adding the ~/media mountpoint back to /etc/fstab as shown in the OP using Emacs’s /sudoedit:: method
  • a handful of successful reboots)

So the status quo is not very satisfying intellectually - no SELinux at all :face_with_diagonal_mouth: I think I’ll cash in my chips for now though and revisit that topic later…

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.