On Jul 19, 2006, at 1:58 AM, Wade Preston Shearer wrote:
I have some questions about an external HD connected to a server (HP ProLiant running FC3). First, I need to learn a little more about mounting things and second, I need to figure out why it is messing up the boot process.When I plug the HD into the server, a directory named the same as the name that I gave the HD when I formatted it appears in /media/. After seeing that several months ago, I assumed that the OS has mounted it up automatically and that I was ready to do. So, I set a cron job to automatically back up to that each night. Well, sadly, I just discovered that the HD has not been mounted this entire time. Apparently, it created that directory but never mounted the external drive. This evening, I typed "mount <drive name>" and it said that it mounted it. I am fairly confident that it is mounted now. Is this the proper method? Do you also have to mount manually? Should FC3 mount automatically? Will it remount it on a reboot?
Disclaimer, I am not a fan of, and do not know FC very well.In the case of most distros, when a USB device is plugged in, hotplug (or some alt) will automatically do some stuff. From your description, it sounds like it is auto creating the mount point (/ media/<drive name>), and adding the details to the /etc/fstab. This will allow you to mount it using the shortcut syntax.
mount <drive name>The shortcut syntax works by looking up your parameter in the /etc/ fstab for the rest of the details. If it cannot find the <drive name> then it will display an error.
About mounting on boot, I highly doubt it will. Since it didn't auto- mount the drive when you plugged it in (only set up the details for you), it probably won't auto-mount at boot. I would suggest mounting the drive in your backup script, and unmounting it at the end of the script.
Now, the big issue. When the system tries to boot, it hangs if this external drive is attached because it tries to boot from it. I checked in bios and didn't see anything about external drives in the boot order. I think that it might be considering it a floppy drive, which seems strange since it's connected via USB. Anyone have any idea how I can tell the computer to ignore it in regards to anything boot related?
When you watch the boot up, does it appear to be booting directly to the external drive, or booting into Grub (or lilo) first, then booting the external drive.
If BIOS is booting the external drive, you would usually find it in the booting options. If Grub is booting the external drive, you need to look at your grub configuration (/boot/grub/menu.lst usually)
--lonnie
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
PGP.sig
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
/* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
