Arch Linux

djg1971

Member

Registered: 2008-09-11

Posts: 212

cannot mount external USB drive

During a recent update I remember pacman asking about replacing some package with another package to handle disk mounting.  I think the added package was "gnome-volume-manager" or "gnome-disk-utility" (or both).  I didn't see any postings describing problems with doing this, so went ahead and allowed the change.  Now it's a few days later and I find I cannot mount an external USB hard drive anymore.  It has an entry in fstab, and although I have tried mutiple edits of the device to associate the drive with, nothing works. 

The disk used to associate with /dev/sdb1.  Now this device no longer exists.  Here is what has happened to my /dev/sd* entries:

brw-rw---- 1 root disk    8,  0 2009-10-27 11:08 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk    8,  3 2009-10-27 11:08 /dev/sda3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk    8,  1 2009-10-27 11:08 /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk    8,  2 2009-10-27 11:08 /dev/sda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk    8,  4 2009-10-27 11:08 /dev/sda4
brw-rw---- 1 root storage 8, 16 2009-11-04 13:00 /dev/sdb

Trying to force association with "/dev/sdb"  "/dev/sda5" (or some other number not in use) or "sdb1" (or 2,3,4, whatever)  just yields "special device ... does not exist".

Does anybody know how to deal with this?

Does anybody know what package(s) I replaced when the update in question took place?  I think I'd like to reverse whatever happened.

And on another note, I think another gnome-based package also recently replaced a package relating to printing.  Yesterday I discovered I have printing problems too:

At first there were no printers found.  Although cups is supposed to start according to rc.conf, cupsd was not running.  I started it manually and then all the printers showed up again, though I cannot print duplex (again, worked fine before).  What is going on with these gnome packages?!?  Anyone know which package(s) I need to remove (and then what to put back) to make printing work like it used to also?

thanks much.

grey

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 679

Re: cannot mount external USB drive

Regarding the USB device: what does 'fdisk -l' show you?

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Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.

djg1971

Member

Registered: 2008-09-11

Posts: 212

Re: cannot mount external USB drive

oddly, fdisk -l shows nothing, even for disks which are mounted (eg. /dev/sda4).  when I insert a standard USB thumb drive, the following show up properly:

brw-rw---- 1 root storage 8, 32 2009-11-05 10:50 /dev/sdc
brw-rw---- 1 root storage 8, 33 2009-11-05 10:50 /dev/sdc1

and I am able to mount and use the drive as usual.

The external drive I've been struggling with has xfs for filesystem type.  After using the thumb drive, /dev/sdb showed up spontaneously, but no /dev/sdb1.  attempting to mount gives:

mount: /dev/sdb is not a valid block device 
or
mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist

depending on which device is specified in fstab.

I am thinking that either a) my ability to mount xfs filesystems has somehow been hosed, or b) there is something wrong with drive, which must have spontaneously failed very recently (it is less than 1 yr old, but this happens from time to time).

If the drive is okay, any ideas about how mounting xfs filesystems could have been broken by recent upgrades?

btw, the fstab entry (which worked fine until a couple days ago) is:  /dev/sdb1 /mnt/external_1 xfs rw,noauto,user,exec 0 0

grey

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 679

Re: cannot mount external USB drive

Oops - you need to run fdisk as root. Even with the -l option. Which is kind of weird, since mount -l can be run as regular user.

So try fdisk -l again as root, or else install and run gparted and check how /dev/sdb looks like. It is weird that /dev/sdb1 doesn't exist. I don't think it is connected to the filesystem on the disk. That would explain why you cannot mount it, but not why it doesn't exist.

One more thing: check dmesg when you insert / deinsert the drive. It might print some relevant errors.

Last edited by grey (2009-11-05 17:12:00)

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Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.

djg1971

Member

Registered: 2008-09-11

Posts: 212

Re: cannot mount external USB drive

-you're right that I was running fdisk from my regular account, but, even as root only the internal drives show up...  After some more tests it is clear that the drive has in fact died, so it is a hardware failure.  I've just unpacked a replacement and that shows up fine, problem solved.  thanks - sorry if I wasted anyone's time.