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While booting, my laptop decided that it was time for an fsck. Time passes. Then suddenly, systemd decides that the fsck has "timed out" and dumps me into emergency single-user root shell mode. There was not any real problem; it was just taking a long time to fsck my disk. /var/log/messages from that boot has lots of kernel messages, but very little userland: Nov 28 11:15:17 laptop kernel: [ 349.173899] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: (null) Nov 28 11:15:17 laptop kernel: [ 349.971958] EXT4-fs (dm-2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) Nov 28 11:15:42 laptop dbus[1480]: [system] Failed to activate service 'org.free desktop.NetworkManager': timed out Nov 28 11:15:42 laptop dbus-daemon[1480]: dbus[1480]: [system] Failed to activat e service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager': timed out Nov 28 11:16:04 laptop systemd-logind[1467]: Failed to start unit: Unit autovt@t ty2.service failed to load: File exists. See system logs and 'systemctl status a utovt' for details. Nov 28 11:16:05 laptop systemd-logind[1467]: Failed to start unit: Unit autovt@t ty3.service failed to load: File exists. See system logs and 'systemctl status a utovt' for details. Nov 28 11:16:06 laptop systemd-logind[1467]: Failed to start unit: Unit autovt@t ty4.service failed to load: File exists. See system logs and 'systemctl status autovt' for details. Nov 28 11:16:20 laptop systemd-logind[1467]: Failed to start unit: Unit autovt failed to load: File exists. See system logs and 'systemctl status autovt' for details. Nov 28 11:16:21 laptop systemd-logind[1467]: Failed to start unit: Unit autovt failed to load: File exists. See system logs and 'systemctl status autovt' for details. Nov 28 11:16:30 laptop kernel: Kernel logging (proc) stopped. Nov 28 11:16:30 laptop rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="5.8.5" x-pid="1524" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] exiting on signal 15. There were a lot more "timed out" messages printed to the screen, but they appear to have not been logged. I'm not sure what time corresponds to when I entered the shell and when I exited it. After forcibly powering down (ctrl-alt-delete caused error messages to be printed, but did not reboot), the next boot was entirely without incident.
That's weird because fsck@.service has TimeoutSec=0 to disable the timeout. Do you know if it was checking the root filesystem or another one? What filesystem type is it?
I guess it's possible that the timeout message I saw that I thought was about fsck was actually about something else and my brain just filled in "fsck" because I knew that's what it had been doing (and my first assumption had been that I got dumped into the shell because fsck had failed). Although that would imply that it was trying to start other services while fsck was running, which is clearly no good either. Assuming fsck was still running, it was checking /home, having already finished the much smaller / and /boot.
Is this still an issue on a fully updated release or can this bug be closed?
I have no idea. I haven't seen the bug again, but I'm not sure I've had a forced fsck since then either.
OK, closing, since this hasn't been seen anymore. Feel free to reopen if this resurfaces.