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

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. Find the device that you are not currently using

5. Insert a # and a space at the beginning of that line comment it out.

6. Reset

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.

Looks like the issue was due to the fact that even though fstab had an entry for a swap, there actually wasn't one. I used GParted to resize the partition and created a new Swap. I then copied the UUID into the fstab file...

1. I now have swap
2. And boot is down to within seconds vs 90+ seconds