partitions of external esata drives not in /dev

[jd1008]

On 10/05/2014 11:53 AM, jd1008 wrote:
> A new problem has cropped up with enumerating all of a disk's
> eternal partitions in /dev. This has not been a problem since
> may or june of this year. It just cropped up when I booted
> this morning.
>
> One external drive (sdb) is connected to the laptop via the laptop's
> built-in esata port, and the 2nd drive (sdc) is connected via port 1
> of the expresscard/34, which has 2 esata ports.
>
> $ ls -l /dev/sdb*
> brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 16 Oct  5 11:25 /dev/sdb
> $
> $ fdisk -l /dev/sdb
>
> Disk /dev/sdb: 1.8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
> Disklabel type: dos
> Disk identifier: 0x0007b94c
>
> Device    Boot Start        End     Blocks  Id System
> /dev/sdb3       2048 3907028991 1953513472  83 Linux
>
> $
> $ ls -l /dev/sdc*
> brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 32 Oct  5 11:26 /dev/sdc
> $
> $
> $ fdisk -l /dev/sdc
>
> Disk /dev/sdc: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
> Disklabel type: dos
> Disk identifier: 0xec3cb3b1
> Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
>
> Device    Boot      Start        End    Blocks  Id System
> /dev/sdc1            2048   31459327  15728640  27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
> /dev/sdc2 *      31459328   31664127    102400   7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
> /dev/sdc3        31664128  162738175  65537024   7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
> /dev/sdc4       162740222 1953525167 895392473   5 Extended
> /dev/sdc5       162740224  288570302  62915039+ 83 Linux
> /dev/sdc6       288571392  305348607   8388608  82 Linux swap / Solaris
> /dev/sdc7       305350656 1144211455 419430400  83 Linux
> /dev/sdc8      1144213504 1953525167 404655832  83 Linux
>
> The internal drive (sda) partitions are all listed
> $ ls /dev/sda*
> /dev/sda  /dev/sda1  /dev/sda2  /dev/sda3  /dev/sda4  /dev/sda5
>
> $ fdisk -l /dev/sda
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
> Disklabel type: dos
> Disk identifier: 0xe686f016
> Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
>
> Device    Boot     Start       End    Blocks  Id System
> /dev/sda1 *       417753  87955874  43769061   7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
> /dev/sda2           2048    415743    206848   b W95 FAT32
> /dev/sda3       87957504 960405503 436224000  83 Linux
> /dev/sda4      960405504 976773119   8183808   5 Extended
> /dev/sda5      960409600 976773119   8181760  82 Linux swap / Solaris
More info:

# dmesg | grep 'sd[abc][0-9]'
[    1.196821]  sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 < sda5 >
[    2.431714]  sdb: sdb3
[   13.079759]  sdc: sdc1 sdc2 sdc3 sdc4 < sdc5 sdc6 sdc7 sdc8 >

Isn't partprobe or udev supposed to be invoked automatically during boot
so that /dev  is populated with the partitions?