Topic: Mounting sata disk in fstab

[dhalliday]

I am having problems mounting a sata disk in the fstab. The disk contains one ext3 file system and the disk is recognized by the system (when booted at lease). What I am doing is about the same as the wiki page on adding a disk except my disk is a SATA not IDE.

I have the following in my fstab

/dev/sda1               /path/to/dir       ext3    defaults       1   3

During boot it fails to fsck the disk (or fails to mount it if I force it to ignore fsck by setting 0 0)

fsck complains about a bad superblock or not ext2/3 file system.

However when prompted to do a manual fsck I enter the password and type:
fsck /dev/sda1
It checks OK. I can even mount it with:
mount /path/to/dir   (so the entry in fstab is probably correct).

It is almost as if the SATA drive is not recognized during boot but is even when prompted to do a manual fsck. Could is be an issue with the SATA device is handled as a hot plug?

Anyone any ideas short of adding a new init script right at the end to mount the disk.

Thanks in advance.

Dave.

[tviles]

If you figure it out let me know. See my post over in general discussion. I'm playing around with 7.4 here at the house now, but have not upgraded the server at work yet. The server at work does same as your post above.

[David Harper]

If two people on different servers have the same issue, that sounds like it could be a bug that needs to be reported & investigated.

[cactus]

If two people on different servers have the same issue, that sounds like it could be a bug that needs to be reported & investigated.

That could be... it might also be different hardware for different people or an unsupported feature.

[tviles]

That could be... it might also be different hardware for different people or an unsupported feature.

Right I will know more once I can purchase another drive for the home server setup. Then I can duplicate it here at the house.

[dhalliday]

I don't know if this matters but the controller I have is NFORCE4 SATA (on Asus A8N motherboard) when I get to work I will try and switch it to the Silicon Image controller also on the motherboard to see if that makes a difference.

Is there anyone of the board that has mounted a second SATA drive in the fstab?

I'm beginning to suspect this may be a bug as it all mounts up just fine when booted.

Dave.

[dhalliday]

OK today I tried the following

1) I tried the Silicon Image controller, still no luck.
2) Updated to 7.4... still no luck.

My current work around is to have the following in the fstab
/dev/sda1               /path/to/dir       ext3    defaults       0    0

Complains that /dev/sda1 does not exist and fails to mount it but at least does not stop the boot as this disk is maked to not be fscked. I then logon as root when booted and do a simple:

mount /path/to/dir

Does anyone have any ideas, as my work around is not the best for a number of reasons including:
  Will fail to mount disk if I am not around when the machine is rebooted.
  Will never fsck the disk.

Thanks Again.

Dave.

Ps. What is the process for raising this as a bug?

[cactus]

Ps. What is the process for raising this as a bug?

See: http://wiki.contribs.org/Bugzilla_Help

[mmccarn]

You can run "mount -a" or "mount  /path/to/dir" after all other SME processes have started by adding it to the "local" event, as suggested here:  http://wiki.contribs.org/USBDisks#Mount_your_disk_automatically_at_boot-up

Simply replace the line that says mount LABEL=MyLabel with the correct mount command that you are running manually, something like this:

Code: [Select]

cat <<EOF > /etc/e-smith/events/local/S95mount
#! /bin/sh
mount /path/to/dir
EOF

chmod +x /etc/e-smith/events/local/S95mount


[tviles]

OK I was able to purchase a used Dell PE 700 with 3 - 146gb scsi hard drives. I was able to add a 4th 146gb scsi drive and it would auto mount on reboot. This MB has two onboard SATA ports so I purchased a new 1TB SATA drive and put it in. That's as far as I can go. If you use one of these sata ports on the MB it's reload time. SME cannot boot once this is done. Sorry I was not able to help. I am reloading SME at the current time to see what happens.

OK today I tried the following

1) I tried the Silicon Image controller, still no luck.
2) Updated to 7.4... still no luck.

My current work around is to have the following in the fstab
/dev/sda1               /path/to/dir       ext3    defaults       0    0

Complains that /dev/sda1 does not exist and fails to mount it but at least does not stop the boot as this disk is maked to not be fscked. I then logon as root when booted and do a simple:

mount /path/to/dir

Does anyone have any ideas, as my work around is not the best for a number of reasons including:
  Will fail to mount disk if I am not around when the machine is rebooted.
  Will never fsck the disk.

Thanks Again.

Dave.

Ps. What is the process for raising this as a bug?

[tviles]

Correction I WAS able to load it up. Took me about 4 reloads but I got it. Still on 7.3 and currently syncing the drives. I used sme nospare setting for install.
4-146gb scsi's and 1 TB Sata.

[root@dell700 ~]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1] [raid5]
md2 : active raid5 sda2[0] sde2[5] sdd2[3] sdc2[2] sdb2[1]
      572588032 blocks level 5, 256k chunk, algorithm 2 [5/4] [UUUU_]
      [===>.................]  recovery = 16.4% (23569088/143147008) finish=128.7min speed=15480K/sec
md1 : active raid1 sda1[0] sde1[4] sdd1[3] sdc1[2] sdb1[1]
      104320 blocks [5/5] [UUUUU]

unused devices: <none>
[root@dell700 ~]# df -T
Filesystem    Type   1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/main-root
              ext3   561442344   1188596 531734120   1% /
/dev/md1      ext3      101018     13429     82373  15% /boot
none         tmpfs     1037348         0   1037348   0% /dev/shm
[root@dell700 ~]# pico /etc/fstab
   UW PICO(tm) 4.10               File: /etc/fstab

# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
#------------------------------------------------------------
# BE CAREFUL WHEN MODIFYING THIS FILE! It is updated automatically
# by the SME server software. A few entries are updated during
# the template processing of the file and white space is removed,
# but otherwise changes to the file are preserved.
# For more information, see http://www.e-smith.org/custom/ and
# the template fragments in /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/fstab/.
#
# copyright (C) 2002 Mitel Networks Corporation
#------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/main/root          /                       ext3    usrquota,grpquota      $
/dev/md1                /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/main/swap          swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda                /media/cdrecorder       auto    pamconsole,exec,noauto,$
                               [ Read 20 lines ]
^G Get Help  ^O WriteOut  ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg   ^K Cut Text  ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit      ^J Justify   ^W Where is  ^V Next Pg   ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell

[tviles]

I don't think this works.

http://www.e-smith.org/custom/

[David Harper]

I think that link used to go to the Developers Manual, which is now on the wiki.

[tviles]

Thanks. Although this is a test server at home I was wondering if put into production enviroment and the 1TB sata failed what would happen? Yes it's a raid5 setup but what would happen if say you had 400 gb in the primary ibay. PS the server did go on and upgrade itself to 7.4 and is still rebooting just fine. It has 500 gb available in the primary ibay. Oh I think I just answered my own question. It's a test server so throw 400 gb of data into the primary ibay and shut down, unplug sata and then turn server back on. Good project for a cold Sunday.

I think that link used to go to the Developers Manual, which is now on the wiki.

[christian]

I don't know if this matters but the controller I have is NFORCE4 SATA (on Asus A8N motherboard) when I get to work I will try and switch it to the Silicon Image controller also on the motherboard to see if that makes a difference.

Is there anyone of the board that has mounted a second SATA drive in the fstab?

I'm beginning to suspect this may be a bug as it all mounts up just fine when booted.

Dave.

I have sucessfully added sata drives as secondary drives runnning as raid and also on a DAS. I've also updated the How-to for AddExtraHardDrive including RAID instructions.

My main SATA controllers are Intel and they work without modification. My DAS is is hooked up via a Silicon Image RAID controller.

First error I see is:

Code: [Select]

/dev/sda1               /path/to/dir       ext3    defaults       1   3I don't believe "3" is a valid fsck parameter. It should be 0,1, or 2. The how-to tells you to use "2".

If you can load the disks after boot but not at boot, then it sounds to me as if the initrd doesn't have the driver loaded.

You should check which driver is loaded when you are successful. A check through /var/log/messages should tell you which driver was used with which disk.

Then check if /etc/modprobe.conf has this driver in it. If it doesn't then that is the start of the issue. You will need to add the driver to modprobe.conf and then because it is a storage device, you will need to use mkinitrd to make a new ramdisk image on boot.

If you are not comfortable doing this then you should simply mount it in say rc.local. Again you may need to use the modprobe command to add your driver.

The silicon image RAID controller, I have been successful loading but the driver in CentOS 4 is pretty basic and I had to add the provided linux driver on to my system in order for it to work properly. I now have it supporting a multi-port DAS. Actually just in the middle of this which is how I cam across your post.