Sometimes Hard Drive dissapears during boot

wpkzz · 2020-04-29 16:55:30

This is quite puzzling, as it is not systematic:

Once every around 10 or so times that I start my laptop the main Hard Drive doesn't get detected and mounted. A very intriging part is that that doesn't happen immediately.
First, grub does start correctly, and so does the kernel and initrm. But after some seconds and some normal messages ( I use non quiet boot ) I get a message of this kind:

(1 of 4 ) A start job is running for /dev/sdaN ( nn sec of 1:30)

where N runs through all the automont partitions of my drive, and nn is simply counting until 1:30 minuts have passed, 4 times.
Then it continues, then it gives the same signal again, and then I get the login prompt, on tty1. But as home is non-existent, I cannot login, it simply
gets stuck.

There are also messages saying that /BOOT and /EFI have not been mounted.
Weirdly, many things that appear to be read from one of the partitions do start up... there is some message signaling me that xbacklight has been reset to previous values, and so on.

My partitions are as follows:

# <fs>			<mountpoint>	<type>		<opts>		<dump/pass>

# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.

/dev/sda6		/boot		ext4		auto,noatime	1 2
/dev/sda2		/		        ext4		noatime		0 1
/dev/sda1		/boot/EFI	        vfat		         defaults	0 2
/dev/sda5		none		swap		sw		0 0
/dev/sda7		/home		ext4		defaults	0 0
/dev/sda9		/media/musicoteca	ext4	auto,user,rw	0 0

Trilby · 2020-04-29 17:01:10

And this is exactly why you should use UUIDs in your fstab.

wpkzz · 2020-04-29 17:17:02

Well, I have been using it like that since 2008 and this is the first time that it happens (with systemd and Arch), Gentoo with openrc had never such an issue.
¿So it is the way that systemd mounts the partitions?
¿and how can we detect it? Due to the seemingly random way that it happens, how can we test that it has to do with the UUIDS?

Slithery · 2020-04-29 17:37:34

You can't detect when it's going to happen because it does just happen randomly, that's the whole point.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pe … ice_naming

loqs · 2020-04-29 17:41:33

The ordering of devices on the same controller was deterministic until a kernel change in 5.3 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/63984

wpkzz · 2020-04-29 18:11:36

Ouh , Gosh... loqs, I think then that may be the issue, ne?

Let me check both references and see if it can be that.
Anyway, then it is probabilistic, no? It seems that they get ordered mostly in the way that I like, and sometimes in some other way...

mmmmjjjj
weeeiiird.

Trilby · 2020-04-29 18:16:13

Do you really care to dig deeper? Just use UUIDs and take probability out of it. UUIDs will always work, that's the whole point of UUIDs.

wpkzz · 2020-04-30 17:25:53

Well, Mr. Inspector Parrot, yeah, I wanna dig deeper. If I use a distro such as Arch or Gentoo is because I wanna understand the workings of it, if I wouldn't then I should be better with Mint.
Then, I find UUIDS ugly as they can be, but after what loqs wrote, I think I should stop doing the fstab in my old style, even the Arch Wiki discourages it now. But I think doing labels would be a good compromise between neatness and determinstic behaviour.

I am still intrigued why this happens not so often, like I said, around 1/10 of the boots... if it where truly random, wouldn't it be like 1/2 of the time ? I only have two hard drives on this machine, one as sda and the other sdb... and being that the EFI partition is on the one usually called sda... mmm curioous.

I shall try labels, and if doesn't happen again after some boots, I shall mark this as Solved.

Trilby · 2020-04-30 18:55:26

I didn't mean avoid learning - but don't waste energy trying to solve an unsolvable problem when there is a very easy way to avoid it. And of course it's not actually random (so not 50/50 with your two drives) but which one is enumerated first is the result of many processes that we simply cannot predict. For example, which drive physically is able to power up and respond faster. It's likely one drive is physically faster than the other on average, but it's not guaranteed to be every time.

Arch Linux

#1 2020-04-29 16:55:30

Sometimes Hard Drive dissapears during boot

#2 2020-04-29 17:01:10

Re: Sometimes Hard Drive dissapears during boot

#3 2020-04-29 17:17:02

Re: Sometimes Hard Drive dissapears during boot

#4 2020-04-29 17:37:34

Re: Sometimes Hard Drive dissapears during boot

#5 2020-04-29 17:41:33

Re: Sometimes Hard Drive dissapears during boot

#6 2020-04-29 18:11:36

Re: Sometimes Hard Drive dissapears during boot

#7 2020-04-29 18:16:13

Re: Sometimes Hard Drive dissapears during boot

#8 2020-04-30 17:25:53

Re: Sometimes Hard Drive dissapears during boot

#9 2020-04-30 18:55:26

Re: Sometimes Hard Drive dissapears during boot

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