> systemd refused to boot when it found the volumes not present
This is not normal systemd behaviour, it waits for the resource, but only 1min 30s by default and then continues booting, (unless the services are considered critical for reaching certain target), logging a failed service, someone must have therefore explicitly configured a custom behaviour in your situation.
> The implementation is retarded.
May be, or may be whoever configured the server this way is, who knows?
> I have enough of that kind of deranged thinking to deal with coming from Windows
As I said above, this is not standard systemd behaviour.
I am not saying that systemd is perfect, but your case seems like misconfiguration, rather than "deranged thinking" from the systemd devs.
I'l encarouge you to read more on its configuration, it's actually fairly flexible, this[1] is a solid starting point.
Bailing out and dropping to the rescue shell when a mount point in /etc/fstab failed is DEFINITELY the normal systemd behavior.One has to mark it as nofail otherwise systemd will assume it is required for boring the system.
(this was originally meant as a reply to above comment was mistakenly posted to grandparent.)
This is not normal systemd behaviour, it waits for the resource, but only 1min 30s by default and then continues booting, (unless the services are considered critical for reaching certain target), logging a failed service, someone must have therefore explicitly configured a custom behaviour in your situation.
> The implementation is retarded.
May be, or may be whoever configured the server this way is, who knows?
> I have enough of that kind of deranged thinking to deal with coming from Windows
As I said above, this is not standard systemd behaviour.
I am not saying that systemd is perfect, but your case seems like misconfiguration, rather than "deranged thinking" from the systemd devs.
I'l encarouge you to read more on its configuration, it's actually fairly flexible, this[1] is a solid starting point.
1 - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/systemd