Getting Rid of Old Swap Partitions That Generate "A Start Job is Running" At Boot Time

Alexzee

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I've found a solution and wanted to post it in case others run into this too.

I have a Asus Tuf Gaming rig with 3 drives. Each drive has it's own Linux distro installed on it.

Well, every time I install a new distro on my 1 TB Seagate or my 500 GB WD my main distro (Debian 10 Buster Gnome) which is on my M2 drive is slowed down at boot time with "A Start Job is running" taking up 1 minute and 30 seconds. It's so annoying!

I think this happens because of an old swap partition that existed.
To fix the issue I opened the /etc/fstab in nano with root privileges and commented out the old swap partitions.

Here is the page I found to help me with those instructions to solve the issue.


Has anyone experienced this "A Start Job is running" at boot up?
 


After I fixed that issue than my Debian 10 Buster Gnome I than had the black screen with flashing cursor and it would finally boot but say:

Gave up waiting for suspend/resume device

The way you fix that is to open the /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume file in nano as root and comment out that old swap partition. Just put a # in front of the old swap partition. IF it boots slow you can re-edit that file and under the uncommented old partition type:

Code:
RESUME=none
Than run
Code:
sudo update-initramfs -u -k all
(when that finishes) than run:

Code:
sudo update-grub

And reboot.

If you have trouble figuring out which partition it is to uncomment, compare the /etc/fstab file with the output of sudo blkid.:)

If you still have trouble figuring out which swap partition it is it's the one that was being complained about in the "A Start Job is running" UUID=(#of partition) for 1 minutes and 30 seconds.

Now I have to go fix this for my Debian 10 Mate install.:(

Seems there is never a dull moment with Linux.
I'm so glad I found the solution as I've been looking for it for years!

Cheers,
Alex
 
Last edited:
Well done, Alex :)

...as I've been looking for it for years!

Should have asked sooner, lol. You know me, and what I think of Swap. :)

Avagudweegend and stay safe

Wiz
 
Interesting find. I never have this problem. Probably because I manually partition drives whenever I install. Useful info, though.

Re one comment in the link: 16GB swap is plenty for the desktop, no matter your RAM total (don't use 128GB swap with 64GB RAM, lol). I have yet to see a desktop system ever use swap, though.
 

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