Two hard drives: One SATA, and One ATA

fatman · 02-06-2005, 12:53 AM

I got my AMD64 system working (reasonably) well with Ubuntu and a 250 GB SATA hard drive (/dev/sda1).

Now I want to use my old 80Gb ATA hard drive and harvest its data (ie. no reformatting) as well in the system. (1/3 of a TB storage fer less than $200 - sometimes the advance of technology is mindboggling).

New HD is still on SATA cable - works fine.
Due to the geometry of the case, the old HD is on the secondary IDE cable.
(DVD drive on primary IDE)

The system is recognizing the second HD as hdc, but it will not mount. It returns: " mount: /dev/hdc8 already mounted or /mnt/hdd2 busy"

There is no evidence that the drive is actually mounted anywhere. (yes hdc8 is a valid partition, and /mnt/hdd2 is a legit folder)

When I run cfdisk on the drive it shows up fine.

Is the hardware configuration OK? If so, what would i need to do to mount the old hard drive partitions?

avarus · 02-06-2005, 06:16 AM

Hi,

I don't think this is a hardware problem. Could you please state the command you are using to mount, and the filesystem of the partition in question. For most filesystems you can mount them in more than one place, and the 'already mounted' error only happens when you try to mount as a regular user, so let's try the foolproof method - I'll assume that you are in a root shell and that the /dev/hdc8 partition is formatted ext3.

# cd /tmp
# mkdir mountpoint
# mount -t ext3 /dev/hdc8 mountpoint
# ls mountpoint

If that fails then maybe there is a hardware problem. Use the file command to take a peek at the raw partition info:

file -Ls /dev/hdc8

If it works then you have a configuration problem. You'll have to check your /etc/fstab, and maybe use fuser to see if anything is conflicting on that folder.

TIM

fatman · 02-06-2005, 10:38 AM

I was using "sudo mount /dev/hdc8 /mnt/olddrive" - i figured that mount woudl autodetect. the filesystem type.
So I tried "sudo -t ext2 mount /dev/hdc8 /mnt/olddrive"
(new folder name fer mountpoint)
same error: "mount: /dev/hdc8 already mounted or /mnt/olddrive busy"

So I then tried "file -Ls /dev/hdc8"
Which returned: "/dev/hdc8: writable, no read permission (Permission denied)"

As far as hardware goes, this drive was working fine less than 24 hrs ago in its old computer - could the position on the secondary IDe bus have soemthing to do with it? (I tried the drive jumper settings in both the slave and master positions, no change in behavior - currently in master).

I am running Ubunutu on the box (I like Debian, but i wanted AMD64 support) so I have to sudo everything - could that have an effect?

avarus · 02-06-2005, 06:56 PM

Hmmm,

OK that looks like a kernel issue I guess. I'm sure I saw in another article on LQ this weekend saying that the AMD64 kernel has issues with drive geometry (the post was related to FC3). You can feed geometry parameters to the kernel at boot, so maybe that is needed, but I'm really just speculating now. You can check the currently detected values with hdparm -v.

I've never tried the Ubuntu no-root environment and can't really see the point of it, but the sudo command does run stuff with true root privileges, so that won't be a problem. Surely you can still do 'sudo bash -l' and get a root shell anyway?

Sorry not much help after all that,

TIM

Brian1 · 02-06-2005, 07:16 PM

Did you have the old ata drive setup as a stand alone hardrive with linux on it?
What does your /etc/fstab file have in it like on the new sata drive?
Lets also see ' fdisk -l ' output of the sata.
If the ATA is bootable lets see the ' fdisk -l ' output of it by itself.

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

fatman · 02-06-2005, 11:54 PM

The old drive was running Debian

Here's the fstab lines for mouting the sata drive patitions:
/dev/sda3 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sda1 /boot ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/sda7 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/sda6 /video ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/sda5 /www ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0

No lines yet for the old drive - since i couldnt get them to work from teh command line I haven't put anything in fstab yet

Here's 'fdisk -l'
Disk /dev/sda: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30515 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 12 96358+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 13 74 498015 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda3 75 1290 9767520 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 1291 30515 234749812+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1291 1412 979933+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 1413 25727 195310206 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 25728 30515 38459578+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdc: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 24 192748+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdc2 * 25 48 192780 83 Linux
/dev/hdc3 49 656 4883760 83 Linux
/dev/hdc4 657 9729 72878872+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdc5 657 899 1951866 83 Linux
/dev/hdc6 900 923 192748+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc7 924 1166 1951866 83 Linux
/dev/hdc8 1167 9729 68782266 83 Linux

'fdisk -l /dev/hdc' just gives half of the stuff above.

Brian1 · 02-07-2005, 05:42 PM

I just read over the post again. Just doesn't make any sense to me why it won't mount. With both drives plugged in at boot and the sata booted to its OS install. It can see its sata drive on sda* and the ata drive on hdc*. The mount command you used is ' sudo mount -t ext2 /dev/hdc8 /mnt/olddrive '. You say you have valid directory called /mnt/olddrive.

More thoughts
So the drive is formmated as ext2 not anything else?
What does your /etc/fstab look like? I might see something there.
Also your /etc/mtab while I am at it? It might help if I see the issue with fstab.
Have you tried mounting as root and not sudo?
Little confused What distro is on the sata again?

Still thinking if I see or think of something I will post.
Later

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

fatman · 02-07-2005, 10:30 PM

/etc/fstab: (no entry for hdc (the old ATA hard drive) yet - hda is actually my DVD drive)

Code:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
none            /sys            sysfs   deafults        0       0
/dev/sda3       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/sda1       /boot           ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/sda7       /home           ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/sda6       /video          ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/sda5       /www            ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/sda2       none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/hda        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto  0
  0
/dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
#//BLACKBOX/homes /mnt/blackbox  smbfs  rw,auto,credentials=/root/.credentials 0  0
//DELL/Desktop  /mnt/dell_desktop smbfs rw,noauto,password="" 0 0
//DELL/My\040Documents /mnt/dell_mydocs smbfs rw,noauto,password="" 0 0

/etc/mtab:

Code:

/dev/sda3 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,deafults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
/dev/sda1 /boot ext3 rw 0 0
/dev/sda7 /home ext3 rw 0 0
/dev/sda6 /video ext3 rw 0 0
/dev/sda5 /www ext3 rw 0 0

- All the partitions on hdc are ext2 (except for swap)
- Can't really do anything as root, Ubuntu won't let me
- Sata drive (New drive, working fine) is Ubunutu Warty Warthog (kernel 2.6.10)
- Ata drive (Old drive, can't read) was Debian Sarge (kernel 2.4.22)

Thanks for the wetware cycles.

Brian1 · 02-08-2005, 03:46 PM

Still makes no sense. My only last thought is use an external usb case to put the ide drive in and and mount it that way.

If you do figure it out please post the answer.

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

fatman · 02-09-2005, 07:52 PM

This appears to be getting weirder all the time.
The error still is: "mount: /dev/hdc8 already mounted or /mnt/olddrive busy"
When I try "umount /dev/hdc8" , I get "umount: /dev/hdc8: not mounted"
When I try "fuser /mnt/olddrive" I get nothing.

"hdparm -v /dev/hdc" gives:

Code:

/dev/hdc:
 multcount    =  0 (off)
 IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
 using_dma    =  0 (off)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    = 256 (on)
 geometry     = 65535/16/63, sectors = 156301488, start = 0

and "file -Ls /dev/hdc8" now gives: "/dev/hdc8: Linux rev 1.0 ext2 filesystem data (mounted or unclean)"

Finally, "strings /dev/hdc8 | head" gives

Code:

ZAD@B
lost+found
matt
warrior
vTLEN
248659TCON
CountryTPE1
Travis TrittTIT2
Best Of Intentions
2>jCI

This means that I am reading off the raw data on the dirve, correct?

I shut down mdadm and some daemon that montiors mounted fielsystems.
I remounted using Knoppix, which reads and mounts the partition AOK (but doesnt mount my SATA drive or display properly on my TV)
Any guesses?