On Sat, 23 Dec 2017 10:35:50 +0100
"J. Fahrner" <jf@???> wrote:

> Hi,
> I did a dist-upgrade from Devuan Jessie to Devuan Ascii.
> Now I have a long boot wait, same message as described here:
> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/368322/long-boot-time-ssd-black-screen-with-blinking-cursor-gave-up-waiting-on-sus
>
> Some problem with initramfs and swap partition.

How do you know it's with initramfs or swap partition? There's some
reference to a swap file in the earlier referenced URL, but that didn't
fix the problem.

> Any ideas what caused this, and how to repair?

The thing that strikes me is that you boot a System Rescue CD disk,
mount all partitions used on your computer, and do a fsck on each to
guarantee no problem with them.

If you suspect it's your initramfs, one tricky thing is that IIRC your
initramfs has its own fstab, so changing the fstab on your root
partition wouldn't effect the initramfs' fstab. I guess you have to
unzip the initramfs, verify its inittab is OK, change if necessary, and
then rezip.

People wonder why I don't like initramfs? This is just one of many
possible pathological cases that can exist. This might not be
the case on your computer, but you still have to check for it, and it's
not a quick process.

If your partitions are all ext4 and your /usr is on the root partition,
perhaps you could compile ext4 support into your kernel and boot
directly to the kernel instead of the initramfs.

SteveT

Steve Litt
December 2017 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/thrive