emergency mode at boot when disconnecting harddrive

English Hardware
1

Hi all, I finally decided to give opensuse a honest try after contemplating it back and forth for years. So far my experience has been nice except for one major thing: when i boot up my laptop with my extra harddrive disconnected it goes into emergency mode and stops the boot process. unless i plug it back in.

I checked fstab to make those partitions user mountable, but it didnt affect the boot process. How can i remedy this?

As a sidenote, since i’m from ubuntuland their solution is much more elegant: if the extra driver is missing during boot, the user is asked if the boot process should continue without it.

2

On 11/08/2011 09:16 AM, KhaaL wrote:
>
> when i boot up my laptop with my
> extra harddrive disconnected it goes into emergency mode and stops the
> boot process. unless i plug it back in.

i guess you installed openSUSE with the USB connected and the install
routine ‘decided’ it was a permanent fixture??

> I checked fstab to make those partitions user mountable, but it didnt
> affect the boot process. How can i remedy this?

if the usb partitions are mentioned in fstab then openSUSE will
complain about them being missing…

additionally, if they are mentioned in fstab it blocks the ability for
that disk to be automounted when plugged in after system startup…

so, i’d say try (first make a backup copy of your current fstab, because
at least now you can boot as long as the USB is connected) removing
all references to the USB drive from fstab, and see what happens…(and,
if that doesn’t fix the problem you can revert to the old fstab and come
back and holler at me!)

> As a sidenote, since i’m from ubuntuland their solution is much more
> elegant: if the extra driver is missing during boot, the user is asked
> if the boot process should continue without it.

sorry, i have no idea how Ubuntu does it, but now that you mention it i
wonder if you are booting for the Ubuntu grub or the openSUSE
gurb…because they are different and not compatible…

and, there are several other differences you need to be aware of if you
wish to “give opensuse a honest try” (by the way, it is openSUSE)

and, check back because there are lots of folks here with more Ubuntu
and UBS connected/disconnected experience than me…

–
DD
http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

3

I installed opensuse from a usb key and with the external harddrive plugged in during installation. I can boot fine without the usb key, my problem happens when i boot without the external harddrive plugged in. Since I want to boot up with the external harddrives partitions mounted, i don’t want to remove its entiries from fstab. But i still want to be able to boot when its not present. Is there a way to make the boot resume normally when it has gone into emergency mode?

The grub i’m booting from is the opensuse one, it’s clearly visible with the green lizard at start :slight_smile:

4

On 2011-11-08 12:26, KhaaL wrote:
>
> I installed opensuse from a usb key and with the external harddrive
> plugged in during installation. I can boot fine without the usb key, my
> problem happens when i boot without the external harddrive plugged in.
> Since I want to boot up with the external harddrives partitions mounted,
> i don’t want to remove its entiries from fstab. But i still want to be
> able to boot when its not present. Is there a way to make the boot
> resume normally when it has gone into emergency mode?

Add the option “nofail” to those fstab lines. If present, the partitions
will be mounted. If not available, the system will not complain at all.
This might lead to other problems, because if you want to mount it and it
is not present, you will not even get an error message.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

5

Thanks, nofail did the trick!