🟡 Medium   ⏱ 5–30 min  Last verified: 19 May 2026

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents
  1. Symptom & Impact
  2. Environment & Reproduction
  3. Root Cause Analysis
  4. Quick Triage
  5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
  6. Solution – Primary Fix
  7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
  8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
  9. Rollback Plan
  10. Prevention & Hardening
  11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
  12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Ubuntu 22.04 takes several minutes to boot, often pausing on mount or network-online targets. Availability and reboot maintenance windows are impacted.

Environment & Reproduction

Systems with stale fstab entries, unreachable network mounts, or hanging custom services. Reproduce by adding a non-existent mount in /etc/fstab.

Root Cause Analysis

systemd waits for failing units until timeout. Mount dependencies and incorrectly ordered services can cascade delays across boot targets.

Quick Triage

Run systemd-analyze blame and systemd-analyze critical-chain to identify high-latency units immediately.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Inspect failed units using systemctl –failed, review boot logs with journalctl -b -p warning, and validate fstab entries with sudo mount -a.

Illustrative mockup for ubuntu-22-04-lts — ubuntu2204-common-problem-05-slowboot-01.webp
Boot process stalls waiting on failed systemd units. — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Primary Fix

Fix or remove invalid mount/service definitions, apply x-systemd.automount or nofail where appropriate, then reload daemon and reboot.

Still having issues? Our IT Solutions & Services team can diagnose and resolve this for you. Get in touch for a free consultation.

Illustrative mockup for ubuntu-22-04-lts — ubuntu2204-common-problem-05-slowboot-02.webp
Use systemd-analyze to identify startup bottlenecks. — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Reduce unit timeouts via systemd drop-ins for non-critical dependencies and defer startup with after-network-online semantics.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Boot time decreases to expected baseline, no failed units remain, and critical services start within SLA.

Rollback Plan

Revert edited unit files and fstab from backups, run systemctl daemon-reload, and reboot to previous known-good state.

Prevention & Hardening

Validate configuration in staging, use unit health alerts, and regularly review systemd-analyze outputs after changes.

Dependency failed for Local File Systems, Timed out waiting for device, start job is running.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

View all Ubuntu 22.04 LTS tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

man systemd-analyze, Ubuntu boot performance tuning docs, systemd.unit manual.

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