boot hangs when back up USB hard drive attached and on

tecsoftware · 07-23-2010, 01:01 AM

A USB hard drive is used as backup drive.

When it is not plugged in, the system boots without any issues.

When it is plugged in, this hangs to the point I have to unplug the CPU.

Didier Spaier · 07-23-2010, 02:20 AM

Welcome to LQ.

Either unplug or shutdown your USB HDD before booting or modify the boot order in you BIOS or disable USB boot in the BIOS settings.

tonyfreeman · 07-26-2010, 07:41 PM

I had a similar problem at one point. I *believe* that the fix for me was to mount the USB drive using UUID nomenclature. For example, here is the line in my /etc/fstab file:

Code:

UUID=9700f7bc-2772-47cb-8c6f-026bb2abb19f 	/media/MASTERBACK  ext4         rw,user,auto     0 0

In order to get the UUID you can use the 'blkid' command as root:

Code:

root@monarch:~# blkid 
/dev/sda5: UUID="74c20a3b-e49c-4c02-b0d4-da92536da0ae" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="BACKUP" UUID="6515d093-5351-4bad-ae7a-87c7d3bad6db" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda1: LABEL="root" UUID="f216ff0a-11e2-4c3a-bbf4-ad0a96e07645" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sdc1: LABEL="MASTERBACK" UUID="9700f7bc-2772-47cb-8c6f-026bb2abb19f" TYPE="ext4"

I recommend that you mount all your devices using the UUID nomenclature.

tecsoftware · 07-26-2010, 11:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Didier Spaier

Welcome to LQ.

Either unplug or shutdown your USB HDD before booting or modify the boot order in you BIOS or disable USB boot in the BIOS settings.

the only devices in the boot in CMOS is the hard drive and optical drive (DVD/CD)...

still happens...

tonyfreeman · 08-10-2010, 10:13 PM

I just had another idea. Remove the boot flag from your USB device.

First make sure the USB disk is plugged in ... but it has to be unmounted. Type mount to see if it's mounted and if so, unmount it:

Code:

tony@monarch:~$ mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/sdd1 on /media/ext4disk type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks)

tony@monarch:~$ umount /dev/sdd1

Switch over to root and let's see if the boot flag is on for that partition we just unmounted:

Code:

root@monarch:~# parted /dev/sdd print
Model: PNY USB 2.0 FD (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 16.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  16.0GB  16.0GB  primary  ext4         boot

Now we turn the boot flag off:

Code:

parted /dev/sdd set 1 boot off

Print out the partition table again and we should see that the boot flag is off:

Code:

root@monarch:~# parted /dev/sdd print
Model: PNY USB 2.0 FD (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 16.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  16.0GB  16.0GB  primary  ext4

Now reboot your system and see if it still hangs when the USB drive is plugged in.

If you would rather do this from a GUI then I recommend installing gparted ... right click on the device and click 'manage flags'.