I am running red hat ws4 linux on an ibm laptop,
new install after upgrading the hard drive.
I installed RH on a new drive, so I still have
the old one.

I put the old drive in a usb enclosure and plugged it
into the new system. The old drive had an NTFS
partition with XP pro and an EXT3 partition with
linux and all my old stuff.

I plugged in a couple of USB vfat drives and they worked well.

I then plugged in the old laptop drive and it automounted
the ext3 partition only (which is fine). I copied a lot
of stuff over, but not all. I powered down and later
returned to copy more stuff. But now no usb drive
works, including vfat single partition drives.

I tried to mount by hand, but it just hangs. If I don't
mount by hand, after a few minutes the system hangs.

The vfat usb drives work just fine when I boot the
laptop to win xp (dual boot system).

Any ideas what might have changed after the first success?
I didn't change anything that I know of. CD/DVDs still
automount just fine. The fstab file has an entry for
cds, but not usb drives.

Thanks for any help.

Roger

Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
> I am running red hat ws4 linux on an ibm laptop,
> new install after upgrading the hard drive.
> I installed RH on a new drive, so I still have
> the old one.
>
> I put the old drive in a usb enclosure and plugged it
> into the new system. The old drive had an NTFS
> partition with XP pro and an EXT3 partition with
> linux and all my old stuff.
>
> I plugged in a couple of USB vfat drives and they worked well.
>
> I then plugged in the old laptop drive and it automounted
> the ext3 partition only (which is fine). I copied a lot
> of stuff over, but not all. I powered down and later
> returned to copy more stuff. But now no usb drive
> works, including vfat single partition drives.
>
> I tried to mount by hand, but it just hangs. If I don't
> mount by hand, after a few minutes the system hangs.
>
> The vfat usb drives work just fine when I boot the
> laptop to win xp (dual boot system).
>
> Any ideas what might have changed after the first success?
> I didn't change anything that I know of. CD/DVDs still
> automount just fine. The fstab file has an entry for
> cds, but not usb drives.
>
I do not know the answer, but I do have a hint.

Recent Red Hat distributions use volume labels to identify the partitions,
instead of partition names. So, for example, while an "old" /etc/fstab might
look like this:

$ cat /etc/fstab
/dev/hda3 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda11 /boinc ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda1 /boot ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda10 /dataA ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdb1 /dataB ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/sda3 /home ext3 defaults,usrquota 1 2
/dev/hdb2 /homeB ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda8 /opt ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda6 /tmp ext3 defaults,usrquota 1 2
/dev/hda2 /usr ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda9 /usr/local ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda7 /usr/src ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda5 /var ext3 defaults,usrquota 1 2
/dev/sdd1 swap swap defaults,pri=15 0 0
/dev/sdc2 swap swap defaults,pri=15 0 0
/dev/sdb2 swap swap defaults,pri=15 0 0
/dev/sda2 swap swap defaults,pri=15 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
valinuxl:/etc /mnt/valinuxl/etc nfs ro,soft,nosuid 0 0
valinuxl:/home /mnt/valinuxl/home nfs ro,soft,nosuid 0 0

A new (not identical: copied from working machines) one would look like this:

$ cat /etc/fstab
# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
LABEL=/1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boinc /boinc ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/boot1 /boot ext2 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/opt /opt ext3 defaults 1 2
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/tmp1 /tmp ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/usr1 /usr ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/usr/local /usr/local ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/usr/src1 /usr/src ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/var1 /var ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda2 /w_xp vfat uid=500,gid=500 0 0
LABEL=SWAP-hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrecorder auto
pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom auto
pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto
pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

Now if you put two hard drives like that on your machine, it might have
trouble figuring out which partition is which. It would depend on the labels
on the other (USB) drive, I expect, and how you configured your /etc/fstab.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 05:30:00 up 17 days, 20:17, 3 users, load average: 4.25, 4.23, 4.18

An update:

I found that the linux ext3 disk in ths usb enclosure had come loose.
That is what caused at least some of the problems. After reseating
the drive, it auto-mounted and I got more stuff off.

But I'm still having trouble with regular vfat drives mounting
at all. The system hangs when logged in a root as well
as a normal user.

It did work once under root. It creates fstab entries as
/dev/usbdisk and mounts the device, not via a label,
so I don't think labels are the problem.