Slow boot - "a start job is running for dev-disk-by..."

I don't recall when the issue started to occur but it's likely when I moved my VMWare Ubuntu image to an external SSD so that I can use the OS on any of my PCs. There aren't many links on Google about the issue but the ones that appear talk about fstab. For example, Slow boot - What is "A start job is running for dev-disk-by..." ? - OpenSUSE Forum.

Mentions having to delete the swap partition and creating it again.

I can try to do this with Gparted but my main concern is losing my current set up in Ubuntu as I'm not entirely sure what will happen if I mess with swap as suggested in the thread. Anyone able to help?

If you get

A start job is running for dev-disk-by...

followed by a 90 second delay during each boot, complete the following steps:

1. Install GParted using the Software Center

2. Open GParted and see what partitions Ubuntu is currently using

3. Edit the fstab file using the line below.

   sudo -H gedit /etc/fstab

4. If you have a device that you are not currently using, insert a # and a space at the beginning of that line comment it out.

5. If you have an external device configured to automount (usually with a nofail option in it), add this to the option to the device: x-systemd.device-timeout=1ms. This sets the wait time of the device to be mounted on boot time to 1ms of the default 90 seconds. Example:

/dev/sdg1        /media/backup    jfs    nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=1ms    0 0

6. Save the fstab file (it would be nice to save a backup beforehand). Test your fstab file by running mount -a. If any syntax error occurs, it would be shown by this command.

7. Reboot and the start job shouldn't appear again.

I had the same issue after resizing my primary partition on my VM since gparted live forced me to delete & reinitialize my swap to do so. That caused a new UUID to be set that didn't match the fstab file.

To avoid the issue, in /etc/fstab you can either

• Replace the swap UUID with the new one (run sudo blkid to find it) after the primary partition resizing.

• Or, comment out the swap partition before (or after) the primary partition resizing.

I would recommend the former since it is the way the OS is meant to be setup.