can't mount usb drive at boot time - 'a race condition'

v43 · 2012-03-01 18:24:28

I have the exactly same problem described here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/367782

which is: my usb drive, in which the boot files resides, can't be mounted at /boot while booting the system. but once the system started it can be mounted with $> sudo mount -a
and my computer doesn't have a cd drive.
this is the fstab line, anyway:

/dev/sdb1  /boot  ext2  defaults,noatime 0 0

if I set fsck parameter to 2, then the booting process stops with an error, as fsck can't find the drive.

the solution given in that post doesn't seem to apply to archlinux, as there's no such file as /usr/share/initramfs-tools/init

is there a similar solution for Arch?

Last edited by v43 (2012-03-01 18:35:41)

v43 · 2012-03-01 19:01:31

btw, adding the kernel option rootdelay=50 or rootwait=50 had no effect at all.

falconindy · 2012-03-01 19:21:55

v43 wrote:

btw, adding the kernel option rootdelay=50 or rootwait=50 had no effect at all.

Of course it didn't, you're not waiting on the root device. The bug report points out that the asynchronous nature of USB devices, and this is exactly the problem. This isn't a race condition, it's simply a matter of the drives not yet showing up.

You might be able to add 'usb' to your HOOKS in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf (don't forget to regenerate your images after changing it), which will cause udev to initialize USB sooner and give the underlying block devices more time to show up prior to the fsck. No guarantee this works. I suggest adding 'nofail' to your /etc/fstab entry so that boot doesn't get held up by a fsck request on a device that doesn't yet exist.

v43 · 2012-03-02 16:49:35

thank you for the clever advice.

but luckily I finally managed to overcome the issues I encountered with booting from my root device, so I don't need to boot from another usb drive anymore.
thanks anyways..

maybe this topic should remain open, in case someone else runs into this problem.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-03-01 18:24:28

can't mount usb drive at boot time - 'a race condition'

#2 2012-03-01 19:01:31

Re: can't mount usb drive at boot time - 'a race condition'

#3 2012-03-01 19:21:55

Re: can't mount usb drive at boot time - 'a race condition'

#4 2012-03-02 16:49:35

Re: can't mount usb drive at boot time - 'a race condition'

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