fscking too soon

[Derek Broughton]

Mumia W. wrote:

> On 08/15/2008 06:26 AM, Steinar Midtskogen wrote:
>> I run Ubuntu 8.04 on an Asus EeePC 900, to which I've connected an
>> external USB drive.  I've made an entry for it in /etc/fstab so it
>> will mount at boot.
>> 
>> However, during boot fsck usually fails to find the drive and the boot
>> sequence stops asking for root password or ctrl-D, which is very
>> annoying if I reboot remotely.  The drive is detected seconds later.
>> I need to get fsck to wait until the USB drive becomes available.  How
>> can I do this?
>> 
>> My workaround for now is to use "0" (passno) in the sixth column of
>> /etc/fstab and to do a mount -a in a script in /etc/init.d, but I'd
>> like to do this in a cleaner way.
>> 
>> I've tried to add the rootwait option to the kernel, but it doesn't
>> make a difference.
>> 
>> Any suggestions?
>> 
>> Thanks,
> 
> I would say that your current method of solving the problem is the
> correct one--unless you wish to delay the boot process.

I have only _suggestions_ - a hint where to look next - but you shouldn't
have to unreasonably delay the boot process - if the drive is going to
always be attached.

First, "usbstorage" (and probably other modules) need to be in the initrd
image for you to have a hope of mounting early in the boot process.

Second, what's on the USB drive?  If it's not actually needed during boot,
passno=2 should be good enough.  passno=0 is explicitly skipping fsck,
iirc.
-- 
derek