Subj : Re: /etc/fstab auto not auto-mounting
To   : comp.os.linux
From : Thomas D. Shepard
Date : Wed Dec 08 2004 06:59 pm

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 20:26:24 -0500, Blake, Todd wrote:

> I've seen this with my USB drive that I use for backups, and it 
> typically had something to do with a driver module being loaded after 
> the mount -a command was issued by the startup scripts.

This sounds plausible. My system is not FC3, but I can poke around and see
if this would happen on my system as follows:

  /etc/rc.d/rcsysinit.d:
  used 8 available 3179704
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Sep 26 14:12 .
  drwxr-xr-x  11 root root 4096 Sep  2 20:41 ..
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   21 Sep  2 20:41 S00mountkernfs -> ../init.d/mountkernfs
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   14 Sep  2 20:41 S20swap -> ../init.d/swap
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   17 Sep  2 20:41 S30checkfs -> ../init.d/checkfs
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   17 Sep  2 20:41 S40mountfs -> ../init.d/mountfs
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   17 Sep  2 20:41 S50cleanfs -> ../init.d/cleanfs
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   18 Sep  2 20:41 S60setclock -> ../init.d/setclock
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   18 Sep  2 20:41 S70loadkeys -> ../init.d/loadkeys
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   18 Sep  2 20:41 S80localnet -> ../init.d/localnet
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   13 Sep  8 06:08 disabled-S90usb ->
  ../init.d/usb

Here you can see that I have disabled the S90usb link, because I have my
usb support compiled into the kernel. Otherwise, the file-system mounting
is clearly scheduled to happen before loading usb support. 

If I knew that
the kernel modules were on the root file system, I could rename the S90usb
link to S35usb so that the modules would be loaded before the file-system
mounting, but this is a kludge. 

Editing the /etc/rc.d/init.d/mountfs to
load the needed kernel module just for usb would be a better solution.
Then you have to make sure that whatever file system has the kernel
modules is mounted first, before mounting the others.

Alternatively, you could create an additional startup script just for the
usb drives. It could load the necessary kernel modules, then mount the
drives, and be linked to run just about any time after mountfs.

Finally, you could do what I have done, which is to compile the usb
support into the kernal, rather than using a module. This seems to be the
most logical solution in your case, given that you always want this usb
system mounted when you boot up (or else you wouldn't have said so in
/etc/fstab). Thus, you always want usb support in your kernel, so you may
as well compile it in.

> 
> AA wrote:
>> I just setup a new FC3 box. I have two external firewire drives I am
>> trying to automount. I edited my /etc/fstab file to add these two
>> lines:
>> 
>> /dev/sda1 /mnt/capture vfat auto,defaults,umask=000 0 0 /dev/sdb1
>> /mnt/removable vfat auto,defaults,umask=000 0 0
>> 
>> ...and i verified that this works by issuing a "mount -a" which
>> successfully mounted the drives. However, when I reboot they are not
>> automatically mounted. After I have booted I can once again do "mount
>> -a" and they get mounted. I suspect that perhaps the two drives are not
>> being recognized by the operating system before it tries to mount them.
>> 
>> Has anyone seen this problem? If my theory is right, how can I delay
>> the mount during the boot sequence to give it enough time to recognize
>> the drives?
>> 
>> Thanks.

-- 
Thomas D. Shepard
I am sorry, but you can't email me.
ImaSpammer@spam.sux is not a real email address. I figure if someone wants to
harvest an email address to use for sending spam, they may as well use this one.

.