said Mike Bird via tde-users:
| Can we see the content of your "/etc/fstab" and the outputs of | "lsblk" and of "lsblk -fs" please?
First, I got in, finally. Did this by booting the System Rescue USB, then choosing from the menu to boot Linux from the hard drive. Which it was able to do -- because there was now an sdb, the rescue USB drive itself.
For completeness -- I hate searching for solutions and finding only "I fixed it, thanks" -- the files you requested. Right off the bat I see and am surprised by fstab mentioning sdb1.
fstab:
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> # / was on /dev/sda1 during installation UUID=4e736c88-85d2-49c4-ac7e-d82bc1866bcb / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # /boot/efi was on /dev/sda4 during installation UUID=8C5E-D456 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1 # /home was on /dev/sda3 during installation UUID=f33fcb46-c800-4a83-acef-3952e6f813d7 /home ext4 defaults 0 2 # swap was on /dev/sda2 during installation UUID=dcbff072-4ab5-4f2d-a6aa-c0ae10c96e6c none swap sw 0 0 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail 0 0
lsblk: NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS sda 8:0 0 14.6T 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 116.9G 0 part / ├─sda2 8:2 0 35.2G 0 part [SWAP] ├─sda3 8:3 0 14.4T 0 part /home └─sda4 8:4 0 300M 0 part /boot/efi
lsblk -fs: NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS sda1 ext4 1.0 / 4e736c88-85d2-49c4-ac7e-d82bc1866bcb 79.8G 26% / └─sda sda2 swap 1 dcbff072-4ab5-4f2d-a6aa-c0ae10c96e6c [SWAP] └─sda sda3 ext4 1.0 HOME f33fcb46-c800-4a83-acef-3952e6f813d7 5.4T 57% /home └─sda sda4 vfat FAT32 8C5E-D456 281M 6% /boot/efi └─sda
I've now commented out the sdb1 in /etc/fstab. Still puzzled why it came up now, in that there has been no sdb physically in the machine for more than a year.
While I'm here, I'll mention again something that I just found useful again: the "FeatherPad" text editor that comes with, I think, LXQT. It has a feature that KEdit could really use: When editing a file that needs root privileges, when you go to save it it prompts you for root's password. If you do the same thing with KEdit, when you go to save it, it says "Sorry, Charlie, you're SOL."
Anyway, thanks, Mike. But for your recommendation I wouldn't have looked. Mystery not solved, but no corpse in the front yard anymore.