External USB Hard Drive fails to mount on boot from fstab
Bug #367782 reported by
Richard Wilson
This bug affects 6 people
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
util-linux (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
When an external USB HD is entered into fstab it fails to mount at startup with the following error message.
"Mounting local filesystems...
mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist."
I get the same error if using the UUID instead of /dev/sdb1in the fstab
In any case the drive mounts correctly with mount -a once the machine has booted.
I believe this behaviour started after a recent 8.10 update because it used to work fine. The problem persists after upgrading to 9.04
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I have been searching Ubuntu Forums and found
http:// ubuntuforums. org/archive/ index.php/ t-1021719. html
It is the same issue. It is interesting that the problem only manifests itself if there is no CD-ROM drive installed. This is the case with the server machine I am using.
The last post in this forum page is as follows:
"
Okay, I think you might have a "race" condition. Edit this file:
/usr/share/ initramfs- tools/init # to stop a race condition
187 maybe_break mount
188 sleep 10
189 log_begin_msg "Mounting root file system..."
sudo /usr/sbin/ update- initramfs -uk all # run to rebuild the image
Make sure you get to the "mount" line. Lines numbers are likely different for your setup than mine.
If this works you might try lower number than 10 to get the least delay needed. If it doesn't some other delay could be added, here and there.
Good luck!
"
I have tried this fix but initially it did not work. I changed the the sleep value from 10 to 50 and this worked. I tried 20, it also worked. I tried 11, it failed. I tried 15, it works and I stopped here. Although booting up takes a little longer I can live with this as the machine is very rarely rebooted.
Hope this helps you iron out this bug.