Package: systemd Version: 227-2 Severity: grave System freezes at boot with "/etc/mtab is not a symlink or not pointing to /proc/self/mounts..."
To reproduce install debian from stretch_di_alpha3 amd64 image (used unofficial firmware variety [1] but suspect this does not matter). Quite vanilla installation with no extra software selected but did customize disk image layout. Its possible that this is really an installer bug, but its manifested through systemd package. Downgrading to libsystemd0 and systemd packages to 226-4 resolves the issue and makes machine bootable. An inelegant but effective workaround. There is a parallel discussion of this issue on the systemd github project [2]. Although there is a mistake; 215-17+deb8u2 is actually 227-2. Marking as grave as issue renders debian installation unusable. --IAS [1] http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/stretch_di_alpha3/amd64/iso-cd/ [2] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/1495#issuecomment-148744470