UB
Universal Blue•2mo ago
myxal

Multi-boot questions (fstab tweaking)

Hi. I'm looking to use/boot different Linux OSes on my machine and figured I'd avoid fragmenting the free storage space by having one partition store the home directories for all Linux installations (don't know which I'll end up using for games). The plan is this: - the physical partition is mounted under /mnt where it's not accessed by anything implicitly; say, /mnt/linux-common; - a given linux install's /home contents is first moved under /mnt/linux-common/home-${DISTRO}.. - ... then a bind-mount is set up in fstab to mount /mnt/linux-common/home-bazzite -> /home 
UUID=... /mnt/linux-co
mmon       ext4    defaults        1 2
/mnt/linux-common/home-bazzite    /home    none    defaults,bind    0    0
UUID=... /mnt/linux-co
mmon       ext4    defaults        1 2
/mnt/linux-common/home-bazzite    /home    none    defaults,bind    0    0
I've set this up but the bind-mount remains unmounted, and bazzite boots into a black screen. The system is responding (to caps lock, ctrl+alt+del), I can SSH in and get it to mount manually, but why is it not mounted automagically? There's a var-home.mount unit that's even in active (mounted) status. 
● var-home.mount - /var/home
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/fstab; generated)
     Active: active (mounted) since Thu 2025-07-31 19:06:52 CEST; 9min ago
 Invocation: b2ad7f564db642fc80766a3f09333539
      Where: /var/home
       What: /dev/nvme0n1p6
       Docs: man:fstab(5)
             man:systemd-fstab-generator(8)
      Tasks: 0 (limit: 37692)
     Memory: 4K (peak: 1.1M)
        CPU: 2ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/var-home.mount
● var-home.mount - /var/home
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/fstab; generated)
     Active: active (mounted) since Thu 2025-07-31 19:06:52 CEST; 9min ago
 Invocation: b2ad7f564db642fc80766a3f09333539
      Where: /var/home
       What: /dev/nvme0n1p6
       Docs: man:fstab(5)
             man:systemd-fstab-generator(8)
      Tasks: 0 (limit: 37692)
     Memory: 4K (peak: 1.1M)
        CPU: 2ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/var-home.mount
1 Reply
myxal
myxalOP•2mo ago
Ah, fixed it by adding a hint for systemd to mount the physical partition before trying to mount /home/: 
/mnt/linux-common/home-bazzite    /home    none    defaults,bind,**x-systemd.requires=var-mnt-linux\x2dcommon.mount**    0    0
/mnt/linux-common/home-bazzite    /home    none    defaults,bind,**x-systemd.requires=var-mnt-linux\x2dcommon.mount**    0    0

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