How to get a USB hard disk to mount on boot

[Villalovos, John L]

I've been looking through the email list and I haven't found this out
yet :(

I have a USB Hard disk and it works great.  I can mount it easily once
everything is booted up.

The problem is that if I put it in /etc/fstab to be mounted on boot up
the usb modules are not yet loaded into the kernel.  So there is no
/dev/sda1 available.

So I am assuming that I need to get usb-storage to be insmod or modprobe
in before the "Mounting local filesystems" part runs.

Can anyone give me a clue on how to do this?

Thanks,
John

[Bob Chiodini]

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 14:06, Villalovos, John L wrote:
>  I've been looking through the email list and I haven't found
> this out
>  yet :(
>  
>  I have a USB Hard disk and it works great.  I can mount it easily once
>  everything is booted up.
>  
>  The problem is that if I put it in /etc/fstab to be mounted on boot up
>  the usb modules are not yet loaded into the kernel.  So there is no
>  /dev/sda1 available.
>  
>  So I am assuming that I need to get usb-storage to be insmod or
>  modprobe
>  in before the "Mounting local filesystems" part runs.
>  
>  Can anyone give me a clue on how to do this? 
John,

One way, build the appropriate modules into the initrd.

Bob...

[Andy Green]

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On Thursday 29 January 2004 19:26, Bob Chiodini wrote:
>  On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 14:06, Villalovos, John L wrote: 
>  > Can anyone give me a clue on how to do this?
>  One way, build the appropriate modules into the initrd. 
Ever since I found out about /etc/rc.local I've been able to brute force 
pretty much everything I wanted to happen at boot.  I don't doubt that there 
is a ten times better way somewhere in the initscripts and /etc/sysconfig but 
for creatures that did not evolve that far: /etc/rc.local is the man.

This script runs AS ROOT after the rest of the initscripts are all done, just 
before you hit the login prompt (and/or go on to start X).

You need something like

modprobe usb-uhci  (or ohci) for 2.4, or
modprobe uhci-hcd (or ohci-hcd) for 2.6

then maybe

modprobe usb-storage

and finally

mount /mnt/MyFstabMountpoint

Then every time you boot it'll get seen and mounted.  You can stick all other 
kinds of stuff in there like custom iptables holes and so on, too.

- -Andy

- -- 
Find your answer without waiting for replies....
Searchable list archives at 
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[Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 02:26:06PM -0500, Bob Chiodini wrote:
>  One way, build the appropriate modules into the initrd. 
Like this:

mkinitrd -f -v --preload sd_mod --preload ehci-hcd --preload usb-uhci \
      --preload usb-ohci --preload usb-storage \
      /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2163.nptl.img 2.4.22-1.2163.nptl

Change 2.4.22-1.2163.nptl for your kernel version.


Or, add an entry for the usb disc to /etc/auto.misc and activate the
autofs service.

Regards,
Luciano Rocha

[Vink]

Bob Chiodini wrote:
>  On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 14:06, Villalovos, John L wrote:
>  
> >I've been looking through the email list and I haven't found this out
> >yet :(
> >
> >I have a USB Hard disk and it works great.  I can mount it easily once
> >everything is booted up.
> >
> >The problem is that if I put it in /etc/fstab to be mounted on boot up
> >the usb modules are not yet loaded into the kernel.  So there is no
> >/dev/sda1 available.
> >
> >So I am assuming that I need to get usb-storage to be insmod or
> >modprobe
> >in before the "Mounting local filesystems" part runs.
> >
> >Can anyone give me a clue on how to do this?
>  
>  
>  John,
>  
>  One way, build the appropriate modules into the initrd.
>  
>  Bob...
>  
>   
I had the same problem with my 120Gbyte usb hard disk.
What I wanted with a big /usr on that disk, so I did the
fsck -p /dev/sda1 and
mount /dev/sda1 /usr
in the file /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit just after the block what starts with
# Initialize USB controller and HID devices


-- 
peace now, that is good for all of us
http://gershwin.xs4all.nl

[Tom Diehl]

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Villalovos, John L wrote:

>  I've been looking through the email list and I haven't found
> this out
>  yet :(
>  
>  I have a USB Hard disk and it works great.  I can mount it easily once
>  everything is booted up.
>  
>  The problem is that if I put it in /etc/fstab to be mounted on boot up
>  the usb modules are not yet loaded into the kernel.  So there is no
>  /dev/sda1 available.
>  
>  So I am assuming that I need to get usb-storage to be insmod or modprobe
>  in before the "Mounting local filesystems" part runs.
>  
>  Can anyone give me a clue on how to do this? 
Make sure you have the hotplug package installed and then use devlabel to
register it with a --automount arg. 
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-3-Manual/sysadmin-guid...
might be of use, even though it is for RHEL.


.............Tom