Arch Linux

xcomcmdr

Member

Registered: 2012-02-25

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] Asus X71SL : secondary HDD auto-mounted by udev hangs boot

Hello,

I'm using ArchLinux on a Asus x71SL laptop. Two months ago, I replaced the old 320 GB HDD with a 64 GB SSD :

% sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 64.0 GB, 64023257088 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7783 cylinders, total 125045424 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63   123041834    61520886   83  Linux
/dev/sda2       123041835   125045423     1001794+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

Here is my /etc/fstab :

# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>	<dir>	<type>	<options>	<dump>	<pass>
UUID=7c92ecef-908f-49f6-b362-58f72ae950dc / ext4 defaults,discard,noatime 0 1
UUID=39ede349-5417-4a5d-95b2-05ad58b01e78 swap swap defaults 0 0
none	/tmp	tmpfs	nodev,nosuid,noatime,size=1000M,mode=1777	0	0

Here is the my Linux kernel revision :

3.2.7-1-ARCH

Note that the BIOS has the SATA-II ports set on 'IDE Mode' instead of AHCI and is password protected. I cannot access it because I forgot the password. Resetting it means resetting the eeprom (according to cmospwd's documentation) and I don't have the hardware to do that. I still can boot on anything (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, optical drive, usb) thanks to the 'pop up menu' ([Esc] key).

Anyway, when I was re-reading the user manual of my laptop, I discovered that it could have a secondary HDD.

I had kept my old HDD so I open the laptop, put it there, close it, and reboot.

Here are it's partitions :

/dev/sda1 ext4 (40 GB). No label
/dev/sda3 ext4 (250 GB) Label : home
Unpartitionned (8 MB)

It had an old ArchLinux installation before I format everything (by using GParted Live from a USB thumb drive) but the old "home" partition. Hence the empty /dev/sda1 ext4 partition.

Upon reboot, here is what I have :
/dev/sda is now taken by the HDD drive and the SSD became /dev/sdb

And the Linux kernel panics after having mounted /dev/sda1 as / (but why does it do that ??) :

successfully mounted /dev/sda1 as root but /sbin/init does not exist
Bailing out, droping you to a recovery shell. Good luck.
[ramfs#] 

If I tell the BIOS to boot on the HDD, here is what I have :

GRUB Error 22

(that's OK since it had my old ArchLinux installation)

Now I really don't know what to do. Do I have to prevent the BIOS from switching the SSD to /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sda ?
I'm not sure how to do that. I guess I'll have to put the SSD in the secondary HDD compartment and vice-versa.

But the old HDD seems to have pins to place a small jumper (which I don't have. I still could find one in a computer hardware shop I guess). May be it can be told that way to be 'slave' (/dev/sdb) instead of 'master' (/dev/sda) ?

. . . . | ........ | ................ |
^^^^ Data    Power
? ? ? ?

(I don't recall something like this on the SSD, but may be it has it, too)

What is strange though is that there is no instructions on the HDD about it, like my old HDDs used to have. If I put a jumper on it, I'll have to guess which pins to connect.

Another solution would be to use the old HDD as an USB HDD, if I can find the hardware for that. But I would really be nice to have both drives in the laptop at all times.

Anyway, that is all. Thanks for reading.

EDIT : Solved by using /dev/disk/by-label/Arch for the kernel line instead of /dev/sda1 in /boot/grub/menu.lst. Totally forgot about that ! >_<'

Last edited by xcomcmdr (2012-02-25 11:31:50)