Hello,

It's late night in my country and tomorrow, here in the enterprise, people will come in order to work with their computers.

this night the operating system hard disk of the server computer has broken down, so I've installed a new one and installed rhel as4.

I've installed the OS only with the OS hard disk connected (just in order to avoid destroying all data this is my first week in linux).

now that I've got the OS ready (samba, postfix, dovecot, vnc... ready) I need to connect the hard disk that had all the data of the enterprise.

well, I've shut down the computer, connected the cables, started it again and tried to mount that file system.

(I need to mount it as /home_1).

Well the problem is that I receive a message telling me that the device is busy or something like that.

Any idea on how to solve that?

PS: note an important thing: I need to mount that old hard disk forever (I mean that I don't want to do the same job each time that I'll shut down the machine).

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.

Please issue:
mount
fdisk -l (as root)
df -h
cat /etc/fstab

and post the output. Use [_code_] without the underscores before your
output, and [_/code_] without the underscores after your output, so it
is easier to read.

Though not familiar with RH, it might be automounting that disk.

More information:

after restarting with the old OS, I've seen that it seems that the old redhat thinks that the hard disks are scsi!

I suppose that as that OS is inside a proliant server that included a very new ATA raid controller, and the driver was very new, it is possible that the driver is using the hard disks emulating scsi hard disks...

<b>THIS IS INFORMATION RELATED TO THE OLD OS RH9:</b>

Well, looking at what calling mount returns:
Also, the fstab file reads:

If I execute fdisk -l /dev/sdb:

That's all, thank you in advance.

So you need a mountpoint for /home_1 on your new HDD?

Joan Murt,

You've got me somewhat confused.

In your first post you stated:
Then in your second post you stated:
Therefore, please explain what you mean by this, and how you can restart
an OS / hard drive that has "broken down"? What does "broken down" mean?

Perhaps the OS thinks the disks are S-ATA? What are they? Please issue and
post the output of "dmesg | grep -i ata".

I read this to mean you removed the old hard drive, put a new
hard drive in, and installed RHEL AS4 on the new hard drive.
Is this correct or not?

If so, then how and why did you "restarting with the old OS?"

Where did you "connect the hard disk that had all the data of the enterprise"?

Post the exact command used and output when you "tried to mount that file system"
and you "receive a message telling me that the device is busy or something like that."
We cannot help you investigate "something like that," only exact output.

Are you wanting to run the new RHEL AS4 OS, or the old RedHat 9 OS?

That's the strangest fstab output I've ever seen. Must be some
type of RedHat specific format. But it shows that your drive
labeled home_1 is already mounted at mount point /home_1.

I can't understand the fdisk output. You have an entire 80GB
drive with only one partition. So /dev/sdb1 is data only, and
/dev/sda has two operating systems?

Now I don't see your problem at all. You want to mount the data
drive, at home_1, but according to your output it's mounted now.
Please issue "ls -alh /home_1" and see if your data is there.

QUOTED:
Therefore, please explain what you mean by this, and how you can restart
an OS / hard drive that has "broken down"? What does "broken down" mean?

The old hard disk corrupted some data but red hat 9 was still able to run, I don't want to leave all the enterprise data in the other hard disk, being managed by a corrupted OS.


Try to explain the rest:
The hard disk A has the operating system [RED HAT 9.0].
The hard disk B has all the data.

Somehow the first hard disk has corrupted some data and now the OS makes strange things. (icons that disappear...).

I don't want to leave all the data depending on a "broken" OS.

I've thought on getting other hard disk (hard diks C) from other computer and try to install there RHEL AS4 just in order to see if it works and to improve the performance of the PC at the same time.

As I'm very novice in linux I've thought on maintaining the Hard disk A just in case.

What I've done is:
Disconnect the Hard disks A and B, connect the hard disk C (bus cable and power cable), install the RHELAS4 into the HDD C.

After configuring everything (samba, vnc, postfix, dovecot...) I've shut down that computer and plugged again the Hard disk B in order to add to the existing brand new installation.

When I've tried to mount that new hard disk I've not been able to mount it as I've explained in this forum.

I want to use RHELAS 4 from now.

The exact command used to mount that hard disk has been:
mount /dev/hde1 /home_1


Speaking about the output of the FSTAB file, this is what is seen from the old OS, hard disk A and hard disk B working.

Understand that I'm shutting down the computer and plugging and unplugging hard disks just to be able to see how is everything working and to be able to compare the two OS's.

the problem then is that with the old OS (RH9) the data can be seen without problems, but with the new one it is impossible to do it.

That's all.

HDE1?

I thought that
IDE0 HDA the first disc and HDB1 the second disc
IDE1 HDC the first disc and HDD1 the second disc

Didn't you tell that your drives are SDAs an SDBs?

That's cool.
You disconnect HDD A and B, connect HDD C and want to mount HDD B on C.

How???

You told that you can access /home_1 with HDD A, right?
Why don't you copy the fstab on a floppy and copy it to HDD B?

In RH9 the driver of the ata raid controller emulated somehow the scsi hard disks even if the real plugged hdd's are ata.

If we talk about my configuration, you'll understand that:

hda : a cdrom
hdb : a ait tape drive
hdc : a hard disk in a ata raid
hdd : a empty slot in the primary ata raid bus
hde : a hard disk in the second ata raid
hdf : a empty slot in the secondary ata raid bus

at least this is how RHELAS4 has detected it.

OK, if you read what you've quoted you'll see that you has not understood what I've written:
I've disconnected all the hard disks and plugged in the new one. Then I've installed RHELAS4 into the newly plugged hdd.
After configuring the OS, I've connected the hard disk B (the one that has all the data) and tried to detect it.

In fact, a couple of lines ahead, you would be able to read:
I have a big problem here, if you want to help, you are welcome, but please leave the sarcasm for others... at least try to read what the other user has written down please.

Joan Murt,

You've jumped around a little bit. Please decide which operating system you desire to use, then keep that drive connected. Then have your data drive connected. Then give the output of:

mount
fdisk -l (as root)
df -h
cat /etc/fstab