Boot up hangs - fstab problem

Question

My Raspberry PI works headless without monitor and keyboard as weather station server. I managed it with SSH and that works ok until today. I added a line into /etc/fstab where it should mount a WebDAV to my cloud drive (I use pCloud).

I restart a server and ... it didn't boot properly!! Raspberry hangs on a line with WebDAV in the fstab file. And why? Link to WebDAV can't be established when network isn't available. But OS should use a timeout and writes an error to log, then skip the line and goes on.

As far as I know, the only solution is to bring a Raspberry to my office where monitor and keyboard are. Any other idea? If someone knows - maybe there is only a keyboard press (maybe 'S') to continue?

Answer 1

I guess you are using Raspbian which comes with systemd. You can try to use automount so the connection is made when it is really used, e.g. when clicking on a link or so. With my NFS shares it works flawlessly. I do not know your settings with WebDAV, so for example I will give you here my entry in fstab for NFS. I think you can adopt it to your needs.

server:/home /mnt/server nfs4   _netdev,sec=krb5p,noauto,nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=5s,x-systemd.automount   0   0

The important part is noauto,nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=5s,x-systemd.automount. You can fiddle with the timeout. If it count down you cannot connect later to WebDAV but it goes on in boot.

B.t.w. maybe it is enough for you to add nofail to the options on your WebDAV entry in fstab? And noauto may also help if you can connect later to the WebDAV.