Dapper flight 6 (ppc): external USB disk is detected too late for mount via /etc/fstab

[Martin Rasp]

I connected an external USB 2.0 disk drive to my mac mini (ppc). The ext3 partition /dev/sda1 isn't mounted during startup due to the error message "* mount: special device /dev/sda1 does not exist". After I have logged in as root I can mount it manually ("mount /home/").

The file /etc/modules contains an entry for "usb_storage".
In "/etc/fstab" there is the following line:
/dev/sda1 /home ext3 auto,rw 0 0

I don't know whether this is a problem of the initscripts or module-init-tools package. Package versions:
initscripts 2.86.ds1-6ubuntu26
module-init-tools 3.2.2-1ubuntu6
linux-image-2.6.15-20-powerpc 2.6.15-20.30

Some boot messages copied by gpm
-------------------------------------------

 * Checking root file system...
[ 40.924776] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[ 40.937169] lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions
[ 40.943437] IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver
/: clean, 26124/9404416 files, 475119/18780761 blocks
                                                                                                                         [ ok ]
[ 41.019826] EXT3 FS on hda3, internal journal
 * Starting Enterprise Volume Management System...
[ 41.592854] device-mapper: 4.4.0-ioctl (2005-01-12) initialised: <email address hidden>
[ 42.318783] hdb: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
[ 42.324784] hdb: packet command error: error=0x54 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x05 }
[ 42.330669] ide: failed opcode was: unknown
[ 42.336696] cdrom: open failed.
                                                                                                                         [ ok ]
 * Checking all filesystems... [ ok ]
 * Mounting local filesystems...
 * mount: special device /dev/sda1 does not exist
 * Cleaning /tmp... [ ok ]
 * Configuring network interfaces... [ ok ]
 * Setting the system clock
Cannot access the Hardware Clock via any known method.
Use the --debug option to see the details of our search for an access method.
 * Restoring resolver state...
 * System Clock set. Local time: Sat Apr 22 09:21:29 UTC 2006
                                                                                                                         [ ok ]
                                                                                                                         [ ok ]
 * Initializing random number generator... [ ok ]
 * Setting up general console font... [ ok ]
 * Setting up per-VC fonts...
 * /dev/tty2
 * /dev/tty3
[ 44.529799] Vendor: SAMSUNG Model: SP1604N Rev: 0000
[ 44.535139] Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
[ 44.609674] SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
[ 44.614959] sda: assuming drive cache: write through
[ 44.644047] SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
[ 44.649359] sda: assuming drive cache: write through
[ 44.655433] sda: * /dev/tty4
 sda1 sda2 sda3
[ 44.704094] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
[ 44.733151] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

you could try to add usb-storage to /etc/mkinitramfs/modules and update your initramdisk with 'sudo update-initramfs'. Does this help you?

[Martin Rasp (mrasp)]

That works great for me. So I can remove my other workarounds (/etc/rc.local). Thanks :-)

I don't think I'm the only person who wants to mount an external usb storage while booting the system. So the entry in /etc/mkinitramfs/modules should be enabled by default (it only increases the initrd file size by a couple of bytes).

During update-initramfs / mkinitramfs I got the following error messages due to missing lvm2 and mdadm packages:

cpio: ./sbin/mdadm: No such file or directory
cpio: ./sbin/mdrun: No such file or directory
cpio: ./sbin/vgchange: No such file or directory

But it worked anyhow.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

I don't think so. I rather think that modules from /etc/modules should be loaded before trying to mount all file systems. reassigning for now

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

Confirmed that this would be the case, there's a race between the USB disk initialising and fstab being mounted.

Not for dapper

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

Neither for edgy, however we've developed upstart (in part) to fix this bug.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Lowering importance due to existing workaround.

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

Dapper is EOL. Can you try with a supported Ubuntu version please?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for sysvinit (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]