UUID's which ones to use ? Replacing a drive with partitions on it.

English Hardware
1

I’ve got round to replacing one of my disks that has swap on it. :wink: This one will probably squeak every 5secs as well.

Using the suggested blkid command I get this, snipped to just cover the new disk.


/dev/sdj1: UUID="74c96b1d-cc8d-45c1-909b-be10f2be2b82" TYPE="swap" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="4c161de5-5b0a-495b-a987-f27e35bc0130"
/dev/sdj2: UUID="1119040d-2242-4aaa-94d4-1cd22814b303" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="cbd6e6ce-4650-4ec2-bfe3-d0f2c72a5f13"
/dev/sdj3: UUID="3d5d9c66-ace8-4ce8-8238-f5668f349bd7" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="a3f4434a-4540-472d-a911-9c4b1576f0df"
/dev/sdj4: UUID="46710d79-411d-4132-853b-fd42a2713c1f" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="367af675-6129-42ef-a41a-51324b487d0a"

From my current fstab I can tell that the new uuid for swap will be the first one mentioned but wonder about the others which will be for /var, /tmp and for want of a suitable name /home2 for the last large partition.

If it’s always the first uuid I then wonder why there are 2 for each partition? Please explain,

When I asked about replacing this disk before I intended to bring the machine up without swap mounted etc and add swap later using YAST to disable it and later re enable it but as I have managed to format the disk in the usb dock I am wondering if I can now simply prepare the new fstab, power down the machine, change the drive power up again and all will be ok.

The complication with doing that seemed to boil down to boot needing to know about swap which is why the best optioned seemed to be using YAST to handle the fine detail. Running without swap did make several changes. Maybe just changing it’s size, position and disk doesn’t ???

John

2

The first UUID shown is the filesystem UUID. The second one shown is the partition UUID (listed as PARTUUID).

For “fstab” you want the filesystem UUID. Also check whether there’s a reference to swap in “/etc/default/grub”. And, after making changes, you might still need to rebuild the “initrd”.

3

Thanks. It sounds like it would be best to remove swap via YAST, change fstab to suite the partitions on the new disk less swap. Restart and add swap via YAST. :’( Then restart again with the corrected fstab.

I have already tried removing swap via YAST and running without it and that seemed to be ok. I found a suggestion on here that this is the best way to do it as there are a number of changes made - some it seems aren’t obvious. YAST loaded reiserfs for instance even though I don’t use it. With a couple of tabs in firefox and not much browsing plus a console memory usage was a bit under 2.5gB. All seemed to be ok when I reinstated swap this way.

;)I will keep a copy of the current fstab and will still have the old disk so if something unfortunate happens it can be put back as it was.

John

4

That should avoid the problem of having to go into rescue mode to rebuild the “initrd”. So yes, that may be a good plan.

5

I’m not keen on uuid’s as they are so long and reading man the prefered mount method seems to be by label which I too would prefer as it can be unambiguous. As I am preparing the disk rather than mounting it I couldn’t set a label via yast. Just tried again and found that if I select mount I can then add a label and then deselect mount and it retains the settings and writes the labels.

In my case I chose to call them swap, tmp, var and extra. :’(spare might have been a better choice for the last one. Now when I manually change fstab there is no chance of me making a mistake.

Due to the squeaky disk post I also formatted tmp and var ext3 but left extra as ext4 as it’s likely to be used for a 2ndry back up so shouldn’t be journalled that often. On the other hand I might decide to change that to ext3 too.:\

John

6

:’(Disaster. I removed swap and rebooted as a check and seemed to be ok. Changed fstab for the new disk, powered down, fitted it and turned it on again. I had the black screen of death after what seemed to be a long boot up time.

Looked at the log file as per the prompt. The main complaint seemed to be some sort of security checks and log files. I couldn’t read the entire lines as they went past my 27" high res screen. Also a fail to mount home2 - the extra space on my spare disk. Other mounts seemed to be ok but some time out messages,

This is how I set up fstab


/dev/disk/by-id/ata-PLEXTOR_PX-128M5Pro_P02306101219-part2    /    ext4    acl,user_xattr 1 1 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-PLEXTOR_PX-128M5Pro_P02306101219-part1    /boot/efi    vfat    umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0 
LABEL=extra /home/home2 ext3 noacl,user_xattr 1 2
LABEL=tmp /tmp ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 2
LABEL=var /var ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/md0             /home               ext4       acl,user_xattr,noatime        1 2

Intending to add swap once it had booted up and then booting up again.

This is the previous one which was ok and is now reinstated.


/dev/disk/by-id/ata-PLEXTOR_PX-128M5Pro_P02306101219-part2    /    ext4    acl,user_xattr 1 1 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-VB0250EAVER_Z3TCNPGW-part1    swap    swap    defaults 0 0 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-PLEXTOR_PX-128M5Pro_P02306101219-part1    /boot/efi    vfat    umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-VB0250EAVER_Z3TCNPGW-part4    /home/home2    ext4    noacl,user_xattr 1 2 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-VB0250EAVER_Z3TCNPGW-part3    /tmp    ext4    acl,user_xattr 1 2 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-VB0250EAVER_Z3TCNPGW-part2    /var    ext4    acl,user_xattr 1 2 
/dev/md0             /home               ext4       acl,user_xattr        1 2

So rebooted into knoppix via a usb stick to restore things back to how they were to suite the above fstab.

Possible reasons for the problem. This time I deleted the swap partition but it still did reboot. I may have just stopped swap from mounting when I tried this just to see what happened.

Log files in /var ? I suppose I could copy across but it seems odd that not having these could cause a boot failure.

Help.

John

7

I tried a slightly different fstab, just moved the /home mount to before the /home/home2 one and took notes this time.

Lots off errors from aparmour, odd because I didn’t think I was running it. Previously I think it had to be installed. It couldn’t write to a cache off /etc - I wouldn’t want it to.

Also a single line error headed audit. It couldn’t open what it needed.

Boot came up with 2 “pending” jobs to run on the partitions on the new disk.Didn’t say what the job was but said they would take 1 1/2 min which they did. I was only mounting 2 of the 3 partitions on it.

This time the home/home2 mount failed due to dependency problems. It did find all of the partitions on the new drive and the other partitions in fstab and seemed to mount the other drives.

After changing back to the old drive I left the knoppix usb boot stick in by mistake. That caused the boot to run the same style of job on the usb stick so I quickly powered down and removed it.

The only other error is a usb fail down to my graphics tablet not having a driver loaded. It’s been like that since I installed leap 42,2 so that can’t be the problem.

John

8

Only one other point I can think of is that 3 partitions changed and there were only 2 pending jobs. Those did seem to be associated with the new disk but the message wasn’t clear. Maybe that was down to one of them being circa 900gB for the home2 mount. That in turn may be the cause of the failure to mount home/home2. I change the order of the /home and /home/home2 mount due to a comment on here. Using ext4 it doesn’t seem to matter. On ext3 it did change the boot messages but the dependency comment where home2 failed sort of suggests that some additional software is needed.

A quick look at comments on apparm suggests that it can’t write to it’s cache by default. If the audit fail is preventing a boot to the desktop rather than enabling it to write it might be better to over ride the boot checks. How can I do that? There has been no changes to paths or permissions, only the size of the partitions they lead to.

John

9

I just put the new disk back in the usb doc and looked at the partitions with dolphin.

/var was used as log contains some of the boot message. It shows one of the “jobs” that were running over and over again until the 1min 30 secs is reached


A start job is running for dev-disk-by\x2dlabel-extra.device (34s / 1min 30s)

This is the rest


[0;1;3m TIME [0m] Timed out waiting for device dev-disk-by\x2dlabel-extra.device.
[0;1;3mDEPEND[0m] Dependency failed for /home/home2.
[0;1;3mDEPEND[0m] Dependency failed for Local File Systems.
[0;1;3mDEPEND[0m] Dependency failed for Postfix Mail Transport Agent.
[0;1;3mDEPEND[0m] Dependency failed for File System Check on /dev/disk/by-label/extra.
         Starting Restore /run/initramfs on shutdown...
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Getty on tty1.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Save/Restore Sound Card State.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Manage Sound Card State (restore and store).
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Closed PC/SC Smart Card Daemon Activation Socket.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped target Graphical Interface.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped target Multi-User System.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped SuSEfirewall2 phase 2.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped NTP Server Daemon.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped LSB: Supports the direct execution of binary formats..
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (SMART) Daemon.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped /etc/init.d/after.local Compatibility.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Purge old kernels.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped /etc/init.d/boot.local Compatibility.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Machine Check Exception Logging Daemon.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped irqbalance daemon.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Reached target Login Prompts.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Closed Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack Activation Socket.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped WPA Supplicant daemon.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Command Scheduler.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Name Service Cache Daemon.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped X Display Manager.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Login Service.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped CUPS Printing Service.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Modem Manager.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Closed Open-iSCSI iscsid Socket.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Login and scanning of iSCSI devices.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Permit User Sessions.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Reached target User and Group Name Lookups.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Discard unused blocks once a week.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Daily Cleanup of Temporary Directories.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Reached target Timers.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped wicked managed network interfaces.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped YaST2 Firstboot.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped YaST2 Second Stage.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped wicked network nanny service.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped wicked network management service daemon.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped wicked DHCPv6 supplicant service.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped wicked DHCPv4 supplicant service.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped wicked AutoIPv4 supplicant service.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped SuSEfirewall2 phase 1.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped D-Bus System Message Bus.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Closed D-Bus System Message Bus Socket.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped Initialize hardware monitoring sensors.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped target Basic System.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Stopped target System Initialization.
         Starting Tell Plymouth To Write Out Runtime Data...
         Starting Security Auditing Service...
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Started Emergency Shell.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Reached target Emergency Mode.
         Starting Create Volatile Files and Directories...
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Reached target Sockets.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Reached target Network.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Reached target System Time Synchronized.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Reached target Host and Network Name Lookups.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Started Restore /run/initramfs on shutdown.
[0;1;3mFAILED[0m] Failed to start Security Auditing Service.
See 'systemctl status auditd.service' for details.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Started Tell Plymouth To Write Out Runtime Data.
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Started Create Volatile Files and Directories.
         Starting Update UTMP about System Boot/Shutdown...
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Started Update UTMP about System Boot/Shutdown.
         Starting Update UTMP about System Runlevel Changes...
[0;32m  OK  [0m] Started Update UTMP about System Runlevel Changes.

All 3 partitions contain a lost and found folder. var shows this


dhcppc0:/home/john # ls /run/media/john/var/
cache  lib  lock  log  lost+found  run  spool  tmp  .updated

So the problems all seem to be down to running the jobs. So what is running them or causing them to run. There are no pending boot jobs according to atq - assuming that is the correct command.

John

10

For clarity, please post

cat /etc/fstab

sudo sudo lsblk -f

sudo blkid
11

I can’t for the failed boot deano without trying to boot with the new disk in place which needs the one I am using currently to be removed. Plus I couldn’t post the output.

The fstab for the old disk - the one that I have booted from to post this is above but here it is again.


hcppc0:/home/john # cat /etc/fstab
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-PLEXTOR_PX-128M5Pro_P02306101219-part2      /       ext4    acl,user_xattr 1 1 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-PLEXTOR_PX-128M5Pro_P02306101219-part1      /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-VB0250EAVER_Z3TCNPGW-part4  /home/home2     ext4    noacl,user_xattr 1 2 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-VB0250EAVER_Z3TCNPGW-part3  /tmp    ext4    acl,user_xattr 1 2 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-VB0250EAVER_Z3TCNPGW-part2  /var    ext4    acl,user_xattr 1 2 
/dev/md0             /home               ext4       acl,user_xattr,noatime        1 2
dhcppc0:/home/john #

The one for the new disk is


hcppc0:/home/john # cat /etc/fstabNewDrive
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-PLEXTOR_PX-128M5Pro_P02306101219-part2      /       ext4    acl,user_xattr 1 1 
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-PLEXTOR_PX-128M5Pro_P02306101219-part1      /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0 
/dev/md0             /home               ext4       acl,user_xattr,noatime        1 2
LABEL=extra /home/home2 ext3 noacl,user_xattr 1 2
LABEL=tmp  /tmp   ext3   acl,user_xattr   1 2
LABEL=var  /var   ext3   acl,user_xattr   1 2
dhcppc0:/home/john #

Then having booted from the one for the old drive with that in place and the replacement in the usb doc


dhcppc0:/home/john # lsblk -f
NAME    FSTYPE            LABEL     UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                                      
├─sda1  vfat                        0FC5-EA9C                            /boot/efi
└─sda2  ext4              SSDsystem 21e36141-6f27-4208-9b02-f32d77ab7386 /
sdb                                                                      
├─sdb1  swap              sdb1      5e727a3a-f29d-4834-a4a7-07e923eed79c 
├─sdb2  ext4                        90ac25b4-3c7b-41d7-8e1c-1627dec3e2d1 /var
├─sdb3  ext4                        be347204-8a44-47e1-adb7-71684f2620f2 /tmp
└─sdb4  ext4                        6889828f-7052-4605-88f9-b012f1732e26 /home/home2
sdc                                                                      
└─sdc1  linux_raid_member any:0     a9604238-465f-b279-abc9-c551d4437138 
  └─md0 ext4                        a6950e00-1198-4554-ab22-9ba4667ad917 /home
sdd                                                                      
└─sdd1  linux_raid_member any:0     a9604238-465f-b279-abc9-c551d4437138 
  └─md0 ext4                        a6950e00-1198-4554-ab22-9ba4667ad917 /home
sdj                                                                      
├─sdj1  swap              swap      74c96b1d-cc8d-45c1-909b-be10f2be2b82 
├─sdj2  ext3              tmp       c0c1e030-698b-4936-a6fe-a6ec3882650e 
├─sdj3  ext3              var       878c8dc7-3805-4095-ad98-b302ef985c3a 
└─sdj4  ext3              spare     7b84c6f9-7986-4406-8190-9c8fa93cf7c6 
sr0                                                                      
dhcppc0:/home/john #

and


dhcppc0:/home/john # blkid
/dev/sda1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="0FC5-EA9C" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="6cc9b049-e812-4280-bf44-6cd06d088bf4"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="SSDsystem" UUID="21e36141-6f27-4208-9b02-f32d77ab7386" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="2aab37f2-c36c-4c24-be67-de10724cda53"
/dev/sdd1: UUID="a9604238-465f-b279-abc9-c551d4437138" UUID_SUB="54d3bd68-168e-e4ef-8c87-82d46fb04dac" LABEL="any:0" TYPE="linux_raid_member" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="d3d5bb47-6dac-4528-8d0f-d81695a3baa0"
/dev/sdc1: UUID="a9604238-465f-b279-abc9-c551d4437138" UUID_SUB="3cea1abf-730b-36a8-add7-aa6d4545e9e5" LABEL="any:0" TYPE="linux_raid_member" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="94ddeed7-07bc-45d5-8abb-0a48ca3ba631"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="sdb1" UUID="5e727a3a-f29d-4834-a4a7-07e923eed79c" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="6a7f84b1-a8d0-4b64-8ab0-41c8531e8e76"
/dev/sdb2: UUID="90ac25b4-3c7b-41d7-8e1c-1627dec3e2d1" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="0c64e612-dfb5-4a4c-80ed-2a74dd9f91ee"
/dev/sdb3: UUID="be347204-8a44-47e1-adb7-71684f2620f2" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="a8a64e70-2b1d-4662-b40f-cbb3b2ed4863"
/dev/sdb4: UUID="6889828f-7052-4605-88f9-b012f1732e26" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="d10a4d6d-6866-44ec-8ef8-e4135f98121d"
/dev/md0: UUID="a6950e00-1198-4554-ab22-9ba4667ad917" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sdj1: LABEL="swap" UUID="74c96b1d-cc8d-45c1-909b-be10f2be2b82" TYPE="swap" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="4c161de5-5b0a-495b-a987-f27e35bc0130"
/dev/sdj2: LABEL="tmp" UUID="c0c1e030-698b-4936-a6fe-a6ec3882650e" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="cbd6e6ce-4650-4ec2-bfe3-d0f2c72a5f13"
/dev/sdj3: LABEL="var" UUID="878c8dc7-3805-4095-ad98-b302ef985c3a" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="a3f4434a-4540-472d-a911-9c4b1576f0df"
/dev/sdj4: LABEL="spare" UUID="7b84c6f9-7986-4406-8190-9c8fa93cf7c6" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="367af675-6129-42ef-a41a-51324b487d0a"
dhcppc0:/home/john #

Swap currently isn’t mounted in fstab. :wink: I can run without it and was fed up of changing the fstabs over.

John

12

One other thought on something running during boot. Pass on Linux disk organisation but sometimes there is an area of disks that isn’t used by the file system as far as a user is concerned or even what ever forms the directory trees. Could something be written there which would cause problems, a disk check or what ever ?

John

13

:’(Thought I would try something completely different so formatted the replacement disk xfs and changed all mount points in YAST using by LABEL for fstab on the basis that it shouldn’t matter if the disk wasn’t in the usb dock when I booted with it - the kernel did find these without any problems.

YAST bug ? Selected don’t mount on var,tmp,home/home2 and added mounts for the same on the new disk and also added the swap partition on it as well. I then checked fstab to see what it had done. Mounts were removed but only one of the new ones had been added. I had closed the partitioner so opened it again. It showed the current mounts not what was in fstab. I didn’t realise at the time but correcting that resulted in the partitions in the disk in the usb dock being actually mounted and being used. When I clicked finish there was an enormous update before it did the partition changes. The update log is actually in the new disk under /var/log/zypp, in fact the whole of /var on it has been used, writes to /tmp too.

YAST partitioner should be working on the basis of what is **currently **in fstab really as far as mounting is concerned. Looks like it isn’t and that can result in a partition being actually mounted live. The 2nd time it showed current mounts and complained about duplicate mount points when I added the new ones. The previous ones were not in fstab any more. If it had used fstab content that wouldn’t have happened. I don’t think that the usb dock did this as it’s possible to get it to unmount for removal and still use yast. In other cases the partitioner may need the actual current mounts and not what is in fstab.

>:(Reboot and no joy. This time I had the :wink: posh black screen of death - the one that asks for a log in name. Also the ntp deamon had job to do as did one partition. ntp timed out so failed.

:)So now the kernel can now handle xfs and ext x, The only one I haven’t tried is ext4 and 2 but it looks like these jobs that run are the main problem. I can disable apparmor and audit from yast but would have hoped that some one would have told me that I needed to do that by now. When I just tried xfs without mounting via yast I had a super quick boot to the console.

John

14

Yast reads what is current mounted not what is in the fstab it only writes to fstab when you accept. Always has been like that. Not a bug it is by design. It does not read fstab just writes it.

15

Further to that, YaST reports all available/discovered block devices (ie mounted or not).

sudo lsblk -fa
16

It is a bug. For some reason it didn’t fully make the changes to fstab when I accepted and didn’t tell me that. For some reason it did the deletes but didn’t add the new mount points. So I opened the partitioner again added one of the mount points and exited, checked and it had done it. Then came the problem because it was taking no notice of what was in fstab. I added the /var one and it complained about duplicate mount points so I set the original one to not mount again even though it was no longer mounted via fstab. The new partitions that were done this way were mounted live as they were changed so /var. /tmp were written to before fitting the disk where it needs to be and rebooting. :)At least it shows that it can run with them.

I’m not sure why the changes were not fully written to fstab but maybe it was down to my /home/home2 mount. Perhaps home must be mounted first but I have posted the fstab where /home is mounted last and that hasn’t caused any problems. The other reason it might have happened was my change to mount via partition labels.

The reason they were mounted may well be down to a change to the format. As I had switched to xfs the kernel needed an update. The update that happened though was massive, and I really mean massive. I wondered if pending updates had also been included.

One thing for sure the first time I used the partitioner it did show all 6 changes before I accepted them. 3 removes an 3 adds plus the addition of a swap partition as the one the fstab that was current didn’t mount swap.

John

17

In summary

I suspect that the new drive being mounted is down to a live kernel update. From the point of view that doesn’t really matter for what I am trying to do. I can see kernel restart uuid’s in the zypper log. Some of the updates don’t make much sense but I have no idea if they were needed.

During boot
Apparm appears to want to update it’s “rules” or something due to the change and can’t (via ubuntu info it defaults to not being able to write ). It’s probably best to disable it for a while.

Audit isn’t happy and just says it fails. I don’t know what that checks or how it’s updated.

These jobs run. That seems to be the major problem and it seems no one has any idea what they are doing, what causes them or why they happen. Personally I don’t think that a re install should be needed if a disk is changed. This is a sore point on Linux for some people but generally they only want to change a /home disk and in real terms doing that isn’t that bad. Swap is easy providing YAST is about - that fully functioning is a big plus for opensuse. It’s a pity it’s dropped updates as sometimes I like to read about them. Disks with var on them seem to be a nightmare. /tmp may be too. Mounting a disk on a folder on another is fully supported by Linux so that shouldn’t be a problem. Linux is also happy if one mount overlays another. It will use that last one. I’m pretty sure I still have a /var and /tmp from the install that is on / in the flash disk.

;)I shudder to think what might happen when I get the need to change the flash drive which is at root. All I should need to do is clone it onto another which given how drives develop is very likely to be bigger - which shouldn’t really matter. As these do fail eventually I’d hope that will be easy. Best forget this for a while.

John