#1122269 overlayroot: Prevents system from (fully) booting; hangs at dhcp-lease

Package:
overlayroot
Source:
overlayroot
Submitter:
pete dawgg
Date:
2026-01-14 15:21:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1122269#5
Date:
2025-12-09 15:08:26 UTC
From:
To:
System  worked with overlayfs enabled (overlayroot="tmpfs") in Bookworm;
problem occurs since upgrade to Trixie.
The boot process stops at "requesting dhcp lease" when overlayroot is
enabled; continues normally when overlyroot is disabled (like below.)
#1122269#10
Date:
2025-12-17 19:05:54 UTC
From:
To:
Just for testing and because i need to deploy an updated system in the near future i converted the system as decribed here:
https://www.devuan.org/os/documentation/install-guides/excalibur/trixie-to-excalibur.html
and it now works as it used to with bookworm.
Mounted:
/dev/nvme0n1p2 on /media/root-ro type btrfs (ro,relatime,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvolid=298,subvol=/DEVUAN)
tmpfs-root on /media/root-rw type tmpfs (rw,relatime,inode64)
overlayroot on / type overlay (rw,relatime,lowerdir=/media/root-ro,upperdir=/media/root-rw/overlay,workdir=/media/root-rw/overlay-workdir/_,uuid=on)

Regards, pd
#1122269#15
Date:
2026-01-14 15:19:37 UTC
From:
To:
After a lot of testing i accidentally found out that this error only occurs when the parameter "ro" is included in the grub boot-commandline.
Without it, the system boots as desired.

Also, it might be worth noting that the overlayfs can be turned on/off by a boot-paramter (regardless of the system config's value): overlayroot="" turns it off and overlayroot="tmpfs" puts in into tmpfs.

Regards, pd