Java Mailing List Archive

http://www.redhatconfig.com/

Home » Gentoo Linux »

Re: [gentoo-user] [SOLVED] External hard disk doesn't mount on boot

Dan Cowsill

2008-03-20

Replies: Find Java Web Hosting

Author LoginPost Reply
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@(protected):
>
> On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 11:13 AM, Dan Cowsill <danthehat@(protected):
> > On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 12:22 PM, Dan Cowsill <danthehat@(protected):
> > > On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 11:01 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@(protected):
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > On Thursday 20 March 2008, Dan Cowsill wrote:
> > > > > Right, so I have an external USB hard drive always hooked up to my
> > > > > machine. I've a listing in /etc/fstab to mount it at boot.
> > > > > Unfortunately, the drive does not boot because localmount can't find
> > > > > /dev/sda1. Now, after the boot process I can find /dev/sda1 and
> > > > > mount the drive just fine, leading me to believe that localmount
> > > > > tries to mount the drive without populating /dev with USB devices.
> > > > >
> > > > > How could I resolve this?
> > > >
> > > > The canonical way is of course to use udev to run a mount script as soon
> > > > as the usb drive's device is created. This is hard and requires much
> > > > googling.
> > > >
> > > > The hackish, kludgy, totally not recommended method that always works is
> > > > to put a call to 'mount -a' in /etc/local.d/local.start
> > > >
> > > > :-)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Alan McKinnon
> > > > alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > gentoo-user@(protected)
> > > >
> > > >
> >
> > Okay, so I wrote a new rule into rules.d that goes like this:
> >
> > KERNEL=="sda", RUN+="/bin/mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /home/dcowsill/usb"
> >
> > Now, this works (sort of). If I were to run udevstart, udev would
> > happily execute mount on the usb drive and all would be well. If the
> > system is restarted or the device is plugged in, no joy.
> >
> > So why is this only executing when I use udevstart?
> >
> Good work Dan. I'll save this thread for future reference.
>
> As someone who has used lots of external drives in the past you might
> want to do your mount by label or some sort of drive specific UUID and
> not by /dev/sda1. What can happen over time is that you'll add a
> second drive and because USB or 1394 often do device discovery order
> by which drive spins up first two identical drives will come up in
> random orders which switches your mounting around strangely.
>
> I've had good luck just mounting by label without using udev but I've
> wanted to figure this out. You've given me a nice start. thanks.
>
> Cheers,
> Mark
> --
>
>
> gentoo-user@(protected)
>
>

Yeh, I only opted for matching the kernel name of the device because
the headless server I'm working on very likely will never encounter a
new USB device. But the rule would be more robust.

Glad I could help.

Cheers

--
Dan Cowsill
http://www.danthehat.net
--
gentoo-user@(protected)

©2008 redhatconfig.com - Jax Systems, LLC, U.S.A.