Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Mythtvnz

Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas?

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dmoo1790 at ihug

Jun 23, 2012, 6:31 PM

Post #1 of 18 (868 views)
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Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas?

My system won't boot today unless I unplug the boot drive. Can't even
get into the BIOS setup. Just hangs with no POST beeps/messages and the
hdd led permanently on. So I can't boot into a cd to try and
diagnose/repair the drive. I can boot a cd if I disconnect the boot hdd.
Any ideas how I can get round this so I can try and fix the boot drive?

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steven at openmedia

Jun 23, 2012, 6:55 PM

Post #2 of 18 (850 views)
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Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On Sun, June 24, 2012 1:31 pm, David Moore wrote:
> My system won't boot today unless I unplug the boot drive. Can't even
> get into the BIOS setup. Just hangs with no POST beeps/messages and the
> hdd led permanently on. So I can't boot into a cd to try and
> diagnose/repair the drive. I can boot a cd if I disconnect the boot hdd..
> Any ideas how I can get round this so I can try and fix the boot drive?

Is it IDE or SATA?

If its sata an option might be an external USB -> SATA adapter so you can
try to access the drive on another system that has already booted.

Steve

--------------------------------------------
Steven Ellis - Technical Director
OpenMedia Limited - The Home of myPVR
email - steven [at] openmedia
website - http://www.openmedia.co.nz

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dmoo1790 at ihug

Jun 23, 2012, 7:15 PM

Post #3 of 18 (850 views)
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Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On 24/06/2012, at 1:55 PM, "Steven Ellis" <steven [at] openmedia> wrote:

>
> On Sun, June 24, 2012 1:31 pm, David Moore wrote:
>> My system won't boot today unless I unplug the boot drive. Can't even
>> get into the BIOS setup. Just hangs with no POST beeps/messages and the
>> hdd led permanently on. So I can't boot into a cd to try and
>> diagnose/repair the drive. I can boot a cd if I disconnect the boot hdd..
>> Any ideas how I can get round this so I can try and fix the boot drive?
>
> Is it IDE or SATA?
>
> If its sata an option might be an external USB -> SATA adapter so you can
> try to access the drive on another system that has already booted.
>
> Steve
>
>
> --------------------------------------------
> Steven Ellis - Technical Director
> OpenMedia Limited - The Home of myPVR
> email - steven [at] openmedia
> website - http://www.openmedia.co.nz
>
Thanks. It is SATA so may try that depending on adapter price.

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stephen_agent at jsw

Jun 23, 2012, 7:59 PM

Post #4 of 18 (848 views)
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Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:55:42 +1200 (NZST), you wrote:

>
>On Sun, June 24, 2012 1:31 pm, David Moore wrote:
>> My system won't boot today unless I unplug the boot drive. Can't even
>> get into the BIOS setup. Just hangs with no POST beeps/messages and the
>> hdd led permanently on. So I can't boot into a cd to try and
>> diagnose/repair the drive. I can boot a cd if I disconnect the boot hdd..
>> Any ideas how I can get round this so I can try and fix the boot drive?
>
>Is it IDE or SATA?
>
>If its sata an option might be an external USB -> SATA adapter so you can
>try to access the drive on another system that has already booted.
>
>Steve

SATA is normally hotswap, so you can unplug the drive, boot from CD
and then plug it in and see what happens. But if it is preventing the
system from booting into BIOS, then it is likely pulling down the
power supply, so plugging it in may just shut the PC down again. I
would recommend unplugging as much of your PC as you can when trying
things that are killing the power supply.

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dmoo1790 at ihug

Jun 23, 2012, 8:19 PM

Post #5 of 18 (848 views)
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Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On 24/06/2012, at 2:59 PM, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent [at] jsw> wrote:

> On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:55:42 +1200 (NZST), you wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sun, June 24, 2012 1:31 pm, David Moore wrote:
>>> My system won't boot today unless I unplug the boot drive. Can't even
>>> get into the BIOS setup. Just hangs with no POST beeps/messages and the
>>> hdd led permanently on. So I can't boot into a cd to try and
>>> diagnose/repair the drive. I can boot a cd if I disconnect the boot hdd..
>>> Any ideas how I can get round this so I can try and fix the boot drive?
>>
>> Is it IDE or SATA?
>>
>> If its sata an option might be an external USB -> SATA adapter so you can
>> try to access the drive on another system that has already booted.
>>
>> Steve
>
> SATA is normally hotswap, so you can unplug the drive, boot from CD
> and then plug it in and see what happens. But if it is preventing the
> system from booting into BIOS, then it is likely pulling down the
> power supply, so plugging it in may just shut the PC down again. I
> would recommend unplugging as much of your PC as you can when trying
> things that are killing the power supply.
>
Didn't know that. Thanks. Pulled the SATA lead and boot goes as normal up to the point that my bootable (I thought) cd didn't. So it's not a power problem at least. Must be something hanging the SATA controller.
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stephen_agent at jsw

Jun 23, 2012, 9:34 PM

Post #6 of 18 (845 views)
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Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 15:19:36 +1200, you wrote:

>On 24/06/2012, at 2:59 PM, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent [at] jsw> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:55:42 +1200 (NZST), you wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, June 24, 2012 1:31 pm, David Moore wrote:
>>>> My system won't boot today unless I unplug the boot drive. Can't even
>>>> get into the BIOS setup. Just hangs with no POST beeps/messages and the
>>>> hdd led permanently on. So I can't boot into a cd to try and
>>>> diagnose/repair the drive. I can boot a cd if I disconnect the boot hdd..
>>>> Any ideas how I can get round this so I can try and fix the boot drive?
>>>
>>> Is it IDE or SATA?
>>>
>>> If its sata an option might be an external USB -> SATA adapter so you can
>>> try to access the drive on another system that has already booted.
>>>
>>> Steve
>>
>> SATA is normally hotswap, so you can unplug the drive, boot from CD
>> and then plug it in and see what happens. But if it is preventing the
>> system from booting into BIOS, then it is likely pulling down the
>> power supply, so plugging it in may just shut the PC down again. I
>> would recommend unplugging as much of your PC as you can when trying
>> things that are killing the power supply.
>>
>Didn't know that. Thanks. Pulled the SATA lead and boot goes as normal up to the point that my bootable (I thought) cd didn't. So it's not a power problem at least. Must be something hanging the SATA controller.

Lots of possibilities at that point. First, I think you need a "known
good" bootable CD - is there another PC you can try booting yours in,
just to make sure? A laptop?

Once you have a bootable CD, if it still does not boot in the MythTV
box, I have found that sometimes the CMOS BIOS settings can go astray
for no known reason, so try using the clear CMOS jumper on the
motherboard and setting everything up again. Even if the settings
seem valid in the BIOS screens, there can still be something bad
requiring a full clear of the entire CMOS RAM. And I would make sure
that anything that can be unplugged from the PC is - basically
everything except the CD drive and the video card.

It could still be a power problem too - I have seen situations where
the 12 V was the problem, and had gone faulty a while ago. But hard
drives will typically still work without proper 12 V power while they
are still rotating. They draw on the 5 V electronics rail through
their circuit board, getting enough power to the drive motor to keep
it rotating and the heads working just fine. But they are unable to
start up without proper 12 V, so everything seems fine until the next
reboot. So swapping in another power supply if you have access to a
suitable one would be a good thing to try at some point. Failing that
or a power supply tester, if you have a multimeter, find one of the
Molex connectors for IDE drives and check the voltages on them.

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paulgir at gmail

Jun 23, 2012, 9:38 PM

Post #7 of 18 (846 views)
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Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 16:34:29 +1200, Stephen Worthington
<stephen_agent [at] jsw> wrote:

> On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 15:19:36 +1200, you wrote:
>
>> On 24/06/2012, at 2:59 PM, Stephen Worthington
>> <stephen_agent [at] jsw> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:55:42 +1200 (NZST), you wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, June 24, 2012 1:31 pm, David Moore wrote:
>>>>> My system won't boot today unless I unplug the boot drive. Can't even
>>>>> get into the BIOS setup. Just hangs with no POST beeps/messages and
>>>>> the
>>>>> hdd led permanently on. So I can't boot into a cd to try and
>>>>> diagnose/repair the drive. I can boot a cd if I disconnect the boot
>>>>> hdd..
>>>>> Any ideas how I can get round this so I can try and fix the boot
>>>>> drive?
>>>>
>>>> Is it IDE or SATA?
>>>>
>>>> If its sata an option might be an external USB -> SATA adapter so you
>>>> can
>>>> try to access the drive on another system that has already booted.
>>>>
>>>> Steve
>>>
>>> SATA is normally hotswap, so you can unplug the drive, boot from CD
>>> and then plug it in and see what happens. But if it is preventing the
>>> system from booting into BIOS, then it is likely pulling down the
>>> power supply, so plugging it in may just shut the PC down again. I
>>> would recommend unplugging as much of your PC as you can when trying
>>> things that are killing the power supply.
>>>
>> Didn't know that. Thanks. Pulled the SATA lead and boot goes as normal
>> up to the point that my bootable (I thought) cd didn't. So it's not a
>> power problem at least. Must be something hanging the SATA controller.
>
> Lots of possibilities at that point. First, I think you need a "known
> good" bootable CD - is there another PC you can try booting yours in,
> just to make sure? A laptop?
>
> Once you have a bootable CD, if it still does not boot in the MythTV
> box, I have found that sometimes the CMOS BIOS settings can go astray
> for no known reason, so try using the clear CMOS jumper on the
> motherboard and setting everything up again. Even if the settings
> seem valid in the BIOS screens, there can still be something bad
> requiring a full clear of the entire CMOS RAM. And I would make sure
> that anything that can be unplugged from the PC is - basically
> everything except the CD drive and the video card.
>
> It could still be a power problem too - I have seen situations where
> the 12 V was the problem, and had gone faulty a while ago. But hard
> drives will typically still work without proper 12 V power while they
> are still rotating. They draw on the 5 V electronics rail through
> their circuit board, getting enough power to the drive motor to keep
> it rotating and the heads working just fine. But they are unable to
> start up without proper 12 V, so everything seems fine until the next
> reboot. So swapping in another power supply if you have access to a
> suitable one would be a good thing to try at some point. Failing that
> or a power supply tester, if you have a multimeter, find one of the
> Molex connectors for IDE drives and check the voltages on them.
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtvnz mailing list
> mythtvnz [at] lists
> http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/mythtvnz
> Archives http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/mythtvnz/
A know reason for CMOS settings to go awry is a dying CMOS back up battery.
I had to replace one this week.
-Paul

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stephen_agent at jsw

Jun 23, 2012, 9:59 PM

Post #8 of 18 (845 views)
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Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 16:38:41 +1200, you wrote:

>A know reason for CMOS settings to go awry is a dying CMOS back up battery.
>I had to replace one this week.
>-Paul

Yes, but I have had the settings go bad with batteries that were fine
for several more years. When the battery dies, it is usually fairly
obvious, with strange settings showing up in the BIOS screens, or the
settings reverting to defaults on each boot. CMOS battery life is not
easy to predict either. In a well designed motherboard, the CMOS RAM
should not be drawing more power than the lithium battery loses
sitting on a shelf. And the shelf life of a lithium battery should be
7 years at least. But some motherboards need the battery replaced as
often as every 2-3 years. Typical seems to be around 4-5 years.

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dmoo1790 at ihug

Jun 23, 2012, 10:20 PM

Post #9 of 18 (831 views)
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Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On 24/06/2012, at 4:59 PM, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent [at] jsw> wrote:

> On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 16:38:41 +1200, you wrote:
>
>> A know reason for CMOS settings to go awry is a dying CMOS back up battery.
>> I had to replace one this week.
>> -Paul
>
> Yes, but I have had the settings go bad with batteries that were fine
> for several more years. When the battery dies, it is usually fairly
> obvious, with strange settings showing up in the BIOS screens, or the
> settings reverting to defaults on each boot. CMOS battery life is not
> easy to predict either. In a well designed motherboard, the CMOS RAM
> should not be drawing more power than the lithium battery loses
> sitting on a shelf. And the shelf life of a lithium battery should be
> 7 years at least. But some motherboards need the battery replaced as
> often as every 2-3 years. Typical seems to be around 4-5 years.
>
I found a bootable cd. Boots ok and I can see two of my three drives listed in /dev. Also in bios setup. Plugged the suss drive back in and system stays up. Now I need to figure out mounting drives after a cd boot and how to scan for the suss drive.

Don't think cmos is bad but could be time to get a new battery just in case.
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criggie at criggie

Jun 24, 2012, 12:31 AM

Post #10 of 18 (839 views)
Permalink

Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On 24/06/12 17:20, David Moore wrote:
> I found a bootable cd. Boots ok and I can see two of my three drives listed in /dev. Also in bios setup. Plugged the suss drive back in and system stays up. Now I need to figure out mounting drives after a cd boot and how to scan for the suss drive.
>
> Don't think cmos is bad but could be time to get a new battery just in case.

Realistically, the CMOS only keeping the clock current. If the OS
boots, it will detect HDD and Optical drives etc all by itself.

More important is, you can read your suspect drive.....
BACK UP THE DATABASE!
Then backup all your other data while its still readable.

--
Criggie

http://criggie.org.nz/

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stephen_agent at jsw

Jun 24, 2012, 12:44 AM

Post #11 of 18 (833 views)
Permalink

Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 17:20:42 +1200, you wrote:

>On 24/06/2012, at 4:59 PM, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent [at] jsw> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 16:38:41 +1200, you wrote:
>>
>>> A know reason for CMOS settings to go awry is a dying CMOS back up battery.
>>> I had to replace one this week.
>>> -Paul
>>
>> Yes, but I have had the settings go bad with batteries that were fine
>> for several more years. When the battery dies, it is usually fairly
>> obvious, with strange settings showing up in the BIOS screens, or the
>> settings reverting to defaults on each boot. CMOS battery life is not
>> easy to predict either. In a well designed motherboard, the CMOS RAM
>> should not be drawing more power than the lithium battery loses
>> sitting on a shelf. And the shelf life of a lithium battery should be
>> 7 years at least. But some motherboards need the battery replaced as
>> often as every 2-3 years. Typical seems to be around 4-5 years.
>>
>I found a bootable cd. Boots ok and I can see two of my three drives listed in /dev. Also in bios setup. Plugged the suss drive back in and system stays up. Now I need to figure out mounting drives after a cd boot and how to scan for the suss drive.
>
>Don't think cmos is bad but could be time to get a new battery just in case.

Mounting is pretty simple.

mkdir /mnt
cd /mnt
mkdir sdx<x>1
mount /dev/sd<x>1 sd<x>1

and repeat for any other partitions on that drive.

But before mounting, I would want to force a full check all the
partitions. Use:

fdisk -l

or if you are using GPT partition tables instead of the DOS format
ones (usually if you have bootable drives > 3 Gbytes):

gfdisk -l

to list the partitions. Then

fsck -C -f /dev/sd<x>1

and so on to check and fix any file system errors. If you are
paranoid, then do

fsck -C -nf /dev/sd<x>1

first to see what problems there are before fixing them.

If there is missing software not on the CD, you can use apt-get to
download and install it into the CD's ramdrive, but it will of course
be gone again on reboot.

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dmoo1790 at ihug

Jun 24, 2012, 2:33 AM

Post #12 of 18 (832 views)
Permalink

Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On 24/06/12 19:44, Stephen Worthington wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 17:20:42 +1200, you wrote:
>
>> On 24/06/2012, at 4:59 PM, Stephen Worthington<stephen_agent [at] jsw> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 16:38:41 +1200, you wrote:
>>>
>>>> A know reason for CMOS settings to go awry is a dying CMOS back up battery.
>>>> I had to replace one this week.
>>>> -Paul
>>>
>>> Yes, but I have had the settings go bad with batteries that were fine
>>> for several more years. When the battery dies, it is usually fairly
>>> obvious, with strange settings showing up in the BIOS screens, or the
>>> settings reverting to defaults on each boot. CMOS battery life is not
>>> easy to predict either. In a well designed motherboard, the CMOS RAM
>>> should not be drawing more power than the lithium battery loses
>>> sitting on a shelf. And the shelf life of a lithium battery should be
>>> 7 years at least. But some motherboards need the battery replaced as
>>> often as every 2-3 years. Typical seems to be around 4-5 years.
>>>
>> I found a bootable cd. Boots ok and I can see two of my three drives listed in /dev. Also in bios setup. Plugged the suss drive back in and system stays up. Now I need to figure out mounting drives after a cd boot and how to scan for the suss drive.
>>
>> Don't think cmos is bad but could be time to get a new battery just in case.
>
> Mounting is pretty simple.
>
> mkdir /mnt
> cd /mnt
> mkdir sdx<x>1
> mount /dev/sd<x>1 sd<x>1
>
> and repeat for any other partitions on that drive.
>
> But before mounting, I would want to force a full check all the
> partitions. Use:
>
> fdisk -l
>
> or if you are using GPT partition tables instead of the DOS format
> ones (usually if you have bootable drives> 3 Gbytes):
>
> gfdisk -l
>
> to list the partitions. Then
>
> fsck -C -f /dev/sd<x>1
>
> and so on to check and fix any file system errors. If you are
> paranoid, then do
>
> fsck -C -nf /dev/sd<x>1
>
> first to see what problems there are before fixing them.
>
> If there is missing software not on the CD, you can use apt-get to
> download and install it into the CD's ramdrive, but it will of course
> be gone again on reboot.
>

Slightly red-faced here. (1) Had a mental block about how you could
possibly mkdir on a read only cd. Duh! Anyway I can mount the two good
drives. Red face (2): It seems I moved my system from the bad/old drive
to one of the working drives some time ago so all is not lost. Totally
forgot about this. Just need to get booting from the relevant disk
working. Seems the Grub MBR was on the bad drive so need to create it on
the good drive, configure and I should be up again.

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stephen_agent at jsw

Jun 24, 2012, 4:41 AM

Post #13 of 18 (826 views)
Permalink

Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 21:33:51 +1200, you wrote:

>Slightly red-faced here. (1) Had a mental block about how you could
>possibly mkdir on a read only cd. Duh! Anyway I can mount the two good
>drives. Red face (2): It seems I moved my system from the bad/old drive
>to one of the working drives some time ago so all is not lost. Totally
>forgot about this. Just need to get booting from the relevant disk
>working. Seems the Grub MBR was on the bad drive so need to create it on
>the good drive, configure and I should be up again.

I have to say that I have been there too. For a long time my grub was
on my sda drive, which has not been my system drive for many years.
When I upgraded sda from a 1 Tbyte drive to a 2 Tbyte one, I was
scratching my head for quite a while trying to figure out why it would
not boot. Eventually I figured it out and set the BIOS to boot from
sdd and everything worked.

So how bad does the bad drive look? Can you read it at all? If you
can, then you may be able to get off a lot of data. I have had to
deal with several SATA drives that have been degraded, but not yet
dead, and I found the best tool was ddrescue (not dd_rescue). In my
case, the drives were suffering from many bad sectors (increasing
hourly), and I got warnings from SMART in time to stop writing to the
drive and copy off all the data. I have copied an almost full 2 Tbyte
drive with ddrescue, and wound up with only 6 damaged (but still
playable) recordings, despite having more than 300 bad sectors. It
took several days for ddrescue to do that, but compared to any other
recovery method I have used, ddrescue is a dream come true. I was
able to run ddrescue in the background copying from my bad drive to my
new replacement one, while the rest of the system was happily running
MythTV. Of course, until I recovered the drive, the list of programs
came up with lots marked with an X icon saying they could not be
found, but everything else just worked.

To get ddrescue, install the gddrescue package (not the ddrescue
package).

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dmoo1790 at ihug

Jun 24, 2012, 4:50 PM

Post #14 of 18 (824 views)
Permalink

Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On 24/06/2012, at 11:41 PM, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent [at] jsw> wrote:

> On Sun, 24 Jun 2012 21:33:51 +1200, you wrote:
>
>
>> Slightly red-faced here. (1) Had a mental block about how you could
>> possibly mkdir on a read only cd. Duh! Anyway I can mount the two good
>> drives. Red face (2): It seems I moved my system from the bad/old drive
>> to one of the working drives some time ago so all is not lost. Totally
>> forgot about this. Just need to get booting from the relevant disk
>> working. Seems the Grub MBR was on the bad drive so need to create it on
>> the good drive, configure and I should be up again.
>
> I have to say that I have been there too. For a long time my grub was
> on my sda drive, which has not been my system drive for many years.
> When I upgraded sda from a 1 Tbyte drive to a 2 Tbyte one, I was
> scratching my head for quite a while trying to figure out why it would
> not boot. Eventually I figured it out and set the BIOS to boot from
> sdd and everything worked.
>
> So how bad does the bad drive look? Can you read it at all? If you
> can, then you may be able to get off a lot of data. I have had to
> deal with several SATA drives that have been degraded, but not yet
> dead, and I found the best tool was ddrescue (not dd_rescue). In my
> case, the drives were suffering from many bad sectors (increasing
> hourly), and I got warnings from SMART in time to stop writing to the
> drive and copy off all the data. I have copied an almost full 2 Tbyte
> drive with ddrescue, and wound up with only 6 damaged (but still
> playable) recordings, despite having more than 300 bad sectors. It
> took several days for ddrescue to do that, but compared to any other
> recovery method I have used, ddrescue is a dream come true. I was
> able to run ddrescue in the background copying from my bad drive to my
> new replacement one, while the rest of the system was happily running
> MythTV. Of course, until I recovered the drive, the list of programs
> came up with lots marked with an X icon saying they could not be
> found, but everything else just worked.
>
> To get ddrescue, install the gddrescue package (not the ddrescue
> package).
>
>
Alas I think the drive is pretty sick. I tried hot plugging it again and it locked up the system until I unplugged it. So I doubt whether I can recover anything off it. Might see if I can find someone who has better tools than I for disk recovery/repair. Or just write it off as a lesson in making backups, not that I back up recordings anyway.
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dmoo1790 at ihug

Jun 24, 2012, 10:24 PM

Post #15 of 18 (823 views)
Permalink

Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

All good now apart from stuff on the stuffed disk. One thing messed with my head a bit. I recommend using UUIDs in /etc/fstab if you're not doing this already. Saves mounting confusion when /dev/sda dies and /dev/sdb becomes /dev/sda, sdc becomes sdb, etc.

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stephen_agent at jsw

Jun 25, 2012, 12:24 AM

Post #16 of 18 (823 views)
Permalink

Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 17:24:04 +1200, you wrote:

>All good now apart from stuff on the stuffed disk. One thing messed with my head a bit. I recommend using UUIDs in /etc/fstab if you're not doing this already. Saves mounting confusion when /dev/sda dies and /dev/sdb becomes /dev/sda, sdc becomes sdb, etc.

Or drive labels. Except that last time I tried them on JFS
partitions, strange things happened. So I use drive labels for all my
ext partitions and UUIDs for my JFS ones. GPartEd will add labels to
partitions for you, and I find they are much more meaningful than a
random UUID string.

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nick.rout at gmail

Jun 25, 2012, 12:26 AM

Post #17 of 18 (824 views)
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Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 5:24 PM, David Moore <dmoo1790 [at] ihug> wrote:
> All good now apart from stuff on the stuffed disk. One thing messed with my head a bit. I recommend using UUIDs in /etc/fstab if you're not doing this already. Saves mounting confusion when /dev/sda dies and /dev/sdb becomes /dev/sda, sdc becomes sdb, etc.
>

Plus 1 for that!

for those that don't know, uuids are easy to find with

sudo blkid

replace the tradtitional /dev/sdxn at the start of your fstab line
with UUID=142099fd-fbee-412c-904d-f78a33fd6275 (or whatever your blkid
gives you)

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stephen_agent at jsw

Jun 25, 2012, 2:23 AM

Post #18 of 18 (818 views)
Permalink

Re: Looks like my system drive is faulty - ideas? [In reply to]

On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:26:33 +1200, you wrote:

>On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 5:24 PM, David Moore <dmoo1790 [at] ihug> wrote:
>> All good now apart from stuff on the stuffed disk. One thing messed with my head a bit. I recommend using UUIDs in /etc/fstab if you're not doing this already. Saves mounting confusion when /dev/sda dies and /dev/sdb becomes /dev/sda, sdc becomes sdb, etc.
>>
>
>Plus 1 for that!
>
>for those that don't know, uuids are easy to find with
>
>sudo blkid
>
>replace the tradtitional /dev/sdxn at the start of your fstab line
>with UUID=142099fd-fbee-412c-904d-f78a33fd6275 (or whatever your blkid
>gives you)

UUIDs are also available from:

ls -al /dev/disk/by-uuid

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