ext2 partition on usb hard drive not detected

[Michael Shulman]

Binary package hint: devicekit-disks

I have an external hard drive that has three partitions: one ext2, one hfsplus, and one vfat. In jaunty and before they were all three mounted automatically when I connected the usb, but now in karmic only the vfat and hfsplus partitions are mounted. I can mount the ext2 partition manually without a problem, and dmesg sees all three.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Sep 19 22:34:13 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
HotplugNewDevices: /dev/sdc /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdc1
HotplugNewMounts:
 /dev/sdc2 /media/Mac\040HFS+ hfsplus ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,umask=22,uid=0,gid=0,nls=utf8 0 0

 /dev/sdc3 /media/UNTITLED vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0077,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro 0 0
Package: devicekit-disks 007-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-10.34-generic
SourcePackage: devicekit-disks
Symptom: storage
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-10-generic i686

[Michael Shulman (shulman)]

The current version of karmic has regressed even further: now none of the three partitions are automounted. Mounting them by hand still works.

[Michael Shulman (shulman)]

Okay, well, one time they weren't automounted. They seem to be being automounted now (except the ext2 partition).

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Indeed, sdc2 and sdc3 are properly recognized by the udev rules, but not sdc1 (which is presumably the ext2 file system).

Can you please copy&paste the output of

  sudo blkid /dev/sdc1
  sudo blkid -c /dev/null /dev/sdc1

here?

[Michael Shulman (shulman)]

Actually, it's sdb1. The other two are sdb2 and sdb3. The commands you suggest, for both sdb and sdc, produce no output.

$ sudo blkid /dev/sdc1
$ sudo blkid /dev/sdb1
$ sudo blkid /dev/sdb2
/dev/sdb2: UUID="cc220906-2acc-3fd4-a07a-f6e01c604054" LABEL="Mac HFS+" TYPE="hfsplus"
$ sudo blkid /dev/sdb3
/dev/sdb3: LABEL="UNTITLED" UUID="18B0-1DE9" TYPE="vfat"
$ sudo blkid -c /dev/null /dev/sdc1
$ sudo blkid -c /dev/null /dev/sdb1
$ sudo blkid -c /dev/null /dev/sdb2
/dev/sdb2: UUID="cc220906-2acc-3fd4-a07a-f6e01c604054" LABEL="Mac HFS+" TYPE="hfsplus"
$ sudo blkid -c /dev/null /dev/sdb3
/dev/sdb3: LABEL="UNTITLED" UUID="18B0-1DE9" TYPE="vfat"

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

sdb vs. sdc depends on which other USB drives are connected, and in which order they were plugged in, indeed.

So it seems that blkid fails to detect the ext2 file system on the first partition. Do you have the chance to try the "sudo vol_id /dev/sdb1" command in a Jaunty live system or from a Jaunty installation? (Or sdc1, depending on which drive it is at that moment).

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Also, does "sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt" work, or does it complain about not being able to detect the file system, and you have to specify it manually with "-t ext2"?

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

The blkid commands were wrong ;-)

Please supply the output of:

  sudo blkid
  sudo blkid -p /dev/sdc1
  sudo blkid -p /dev/sdb1
  sudo blkid -p /dev/sdb2

[Michael Shulman (shulman)]

I will see if I can boot a Jaunty live system to try out the disk there. (Does "vol_id" mean "blkid"?)

$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

$ sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="662CE99C2CE9678F" LABEL="IBM_PRELOAD" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="MYTEMP" UUID="4ACF-A525" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sda3: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL="BOOTMAGIC" UUID="43DA-4D6F" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sda5: LABEL="/" UUID="c79287f0-f0e9-4326-bf22-fde180e1d028" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda6: UUID="89562c35-2bbd-4c73-885e-6ece61123c07" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdb2: UUID="cc220906-2acc-3fd4-a07a-f6e01c604054" LABEL="Mac HFS+" TYPE="hfsplus"
/dev/sdb3: LABEL="UNTITLED" UUID="18B0-1DE9" TYPE="vfat"
$ sudo blkid -p /dev/sdc1
$ sudo blkid -p /dev/sdb1
/dev/sdb1: ambivalent result (probably more filesystems on the device)
$ sudo blkid -p /dev/sdb2
/dev/sdb2: UUID="cc220906-2acc-3fd4-a07a-f6e01c604054" LABEL="Mac HFS+" TYPE="hfsplus" USAGE="filesystem"
$ sudo blkid -p /dev/sdb3
/dev/sdb3: LABEL="UNTITLED" UUID="18B0-1DE9" VERSION="FAT32" TYPE="vfat" USAGE="filesystem"

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Michael Shulman [2009-10-12 16:07 -0000]:
> I will see if I can boot a Jaunty live system to try out the disk there.
> (Does "vol_id" mean "blkid"?)

No, jaunty used "vol_id", karmic uses "blkid".

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

So you have this error:

$ sudo blkid -p /dev/sdb1
/dev/sdb1: ambivalent result (probably more filesystems on the device)

This means that blkid detected the metadata of multiple filesystems on the device, and thus it will refuse to do anything because it could be either - and making an assumption could destroy your filesystem.

[Michael Shulman (shulman)]

Are you saying there's something wrong with the device? Does "multiple filesystems" refer to something other than the existence of the HFS+ and FAT32 partitions sdb2 and sdb3?

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 17:17 +0000, Michael Shulman wrote:

> Are you saying there's something wrong with the device? Does "multiple
> filesystems" refer to something other than the existence of the HFS+ and
> FAT32 partitions sdb2 and sdb3?
>
It means that when you formatted the disk, the tool you used did not
clean the disk first. So now, it has both the metadata of the partition
that you just formatted *and* the metadata of whatever was on there
before.

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
<email address hidden>

[Michael Shulman (shulman)]

Huh. I didn't know that was possible. Why would that affect only the ext2 partition?

It does work fine in other operating systems, including my previous installation of jaunty. So it seems like it ought to be possible for it to work in karmic.

[Pentagon (slava-z)]

I have the same behaviour on my box. It has openSuSE and Karmic installed on different partitions and I have an usb hdd with ext2 FS on it. When I plug my usb hdd to my box with openSuSE loaded it seems to be OK: usb hdd partition correctly detected and got mounted. When Karmic is booted I have to mount that usb hdd manually.