Hi Mark, As for my setup, vanilla SLES12 SP2. An installation based on EXT4. Moved /usr, /opt, /tmp, /home into LVM rootvg. Installed the software base without the Gnome and X Window system patterns. The errors already appear during the reboot right after the initial installation.
indeed I have found a lot of discussions on this subject. Mostly from a couple of years ago for Fedora, Gentoo and Debian. There the switch to systemd lead to similar issues. The most pressing issue is that systemd requires /usr to be available at boot. So they suggest to make /usr available in the initramfs. SLES12 already has that so that's not the solution. Also in these discussions it is often asked *why* to use a separate partition. Apart from answers like mounting Read Only and use other (faster or striped) disks for /usr, in our case we have model 9 DASD, so it's limited to 6.88GB. But some installations require more than 7GB in the base filesystems, so we do need an LVM for that in order to provide for that size. The console shows a couple of things. First of all "Booting default". It creates /sysroot and also finds and mounts /dev/mapper/rootvg-usrlv. Next grub is started. Now quite a lot of items are initialized. Also systemd is started. The DASD devices in the system are found. A filesystemcheck is executed for / and dev/rootvg/usrlv. After some more initialization it reaches the Switch root target. It looks like /usr is to be umounted in order to mount it in / but it is unable to do so since there are processes active in /usr at that time. Obviously at least systemd itself is active. It looks like systemd now starts processes (or tries to start them) before the system is entirely available. In sysv init at least a couple of processes were in fixed order, most notably the processes to provide for the rootfs and lvm systems. Only after the base system was available the remainder is started. Granted, even in sysv we do see an error with a perl requirement in boot.rootfsck. So while it is stated that a separate /usr is supported in these systems, I am wondering how to configure that? At least systemd itself relies on /usr and by starting process more quickly more processes might require /usr. But during boot the /usr is to be moved from /sysroot into /. Met vriendelijke groet/With kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Berry van Sleeuwen This e-mail and the documents attached are confidential and intended solely for the addressee; it may also be privileged. If you receive this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and destroy it. As its integrity cannot be secured on the Internet, Atos’ liability cannot be triggered for the message content. Although the sender endeavours to maintain a computer virus-free network, the sender does not warrant that this transmission is virus-free and will not be liable for any damages resulting from any virus transmitted. On all offers and agreements under which Atos Nederland B.V. supplies goods and/or services of whatever nature, the Terms of Delivery from Atos Nederland B.V. exclusively apply. The Terms of Delivery shall be promptly submitted to you on your request.