Very Computer

Hi all,

I'm using SuSE on my home machine with pretty much standard settings.
Since upgrading to SuSE 9.3 I'm having trouble with getting an external
USB HD properly recognized during boot up. The drive should be mounted
as /Windows/D according to my etc/fstab listed below.

/dev/hda3  /           reiserfs   acl,user_xattr        1 1
/dev/hda1  /windows/C  ntfs
ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/sda1  /windows/D  vfat       users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true
0 0
/dev/hda2  swap        swap       pri=42                0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5
   0 0
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults
   0 0
usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto
   0 0
sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto
   0 0
/dev/cdrecorder  /media/cdrecorder    subfs
noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/cdrom           /media/cdrom         subfs
noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0             /media/floppy        subfs
noauto,fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0

It is not mounted automatically and I noticed a "not a valid block
device" message during boot process. This is the relevant excerpt from
boot.omsg log file.

< ...>
Mounting local file systems...
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620,gid=5)
/dev/hda1 on /windows/C type ntfs
(ro,noexec,nosuid,nodev,gid=100,umask=0002,nls=utf8)
mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device
failed
<...>

When I manually mount the drive as root in a shell, using the command
"mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /Windows/D" it works. Also, the partition
called DATA that is located on that drive is recognized under
/media/DATA.

Any ideas what's going on here? I don't even know where to research
this. Can anyone point me to the right direction?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thx,

Stefan

Apparently USB drivers are not loaded at the point where /windows/C is being
mounted; when you execute the same command after system was booted, drivers
are already in place.

Have you tried remove (comment out) this like in fstab and let system mount
it automatically? Most modern distribution will do it for hotpluggable
devices.

Quote:> Any ideas what's going on here? I don't even know where to research
> this. Can anyone point me to the right direction?

Does SuSE 9.3 use HAL by any chance?

=arvi=

kermit schrieb:

Quote:> Have you tried remove (comment out) this like in fstab and let system mount
> it automatically? Most modern distribution will do it for hotpluggable
> devices.

I have thought about that, but I don't know enough about FSTAB entries
yet. Do you mean by "let the system mount it automatically" that I
should use fixed mount points? The way of dynamically assigning
mountpoints is apparently new in SuSE 9.3 and after some googling I
found  under
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2005/05/dkukawka_hal_mountpoints.html
instructions how to go back to static mountpoint regime (as it was in
previous releases). I will try that next.

Quote:> Does SuSE 9.3 use HAL by any chance?

Yes, it does (started doing so since release of 9.3). BTW, I do get a
repeated series of "linux hal.hotplug [xxxxxx]: DEVPATH is not set "
entries in my system messages. I don't know enough about hotplugging
stuff to really say that  these things are related to my problem and I
did a separate posting some time ago, but never got an response. From
what I researched, the message is not really critical.