In the saga of recovering from a raid controller error I am making progress and now have a bootable set of partitions (root, swap and home etc) on one array and a clone of a different installation which also has Bios, root, home and swap on another array.
The trouble is that when now booting from the first array, which is what I want, the boot process sees the second array with root, home and swap on it and tries to mount. How can I stop this so the system only boots from the first array and ignores the second?
Budgie2
Remove the entries from /etc/fstab (or comment them out by placing a # at the beginning) or add the noauto option.
Hi Henk,
Very many thanks for your help. I feel I am almost there but I cannot get to a situation where I can edit fstab unless I use a Live CD but a question. Since I have never run the system I am trying to run on the first drive (array) how would the presence of the other partitions on the second drive (array0 get into fstab. Does automount put them there?
Reading the roll up screen during boot it appears as though the system finds the second array and starts over using the new partitions. I see references to XFS for example which only exists on the second drive (array).
If I want to use noauto, how do I enter that at boot and how then do I select which partitions are mounted?
I shall read up man pages but your further help would be much appreciated.
Budgie2
Are you mounting by label? If so you can’t have two partitions with the same label
I wil be a bit carefull here, because I have not read all of the thread above. I only answered the basic question (as I saw it): how to prevent mounting of partitions at boot. The question includes imho that those mounts do have entries in /etc/fstab, because during boot (the equivalent of) a mount -a is done. So I gave a general advice about three ways of preventing a mount -a doing mmounts you do not want.
And yes, when such a mount you do not want, prevents your system from booting at all, a live system (rescue CD or the like) is needed to do the editing of /etc/fstab. You could try if a boot in single user mode is sufficient though.
And please be carefull with the expression “automount”. It can mean several things and it’s use is thus vulnarable to misunderstandings.
Hi Henk and thanks for the prompt reply.
Your cautions are noted. I shall have a look at /etc/fstab in the first drive using Live CD and come back.
Hi I have used a Live 13.2 CD to explore my machine. I believe the correct /etc/fstab file is as follows:-
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SServeRA_Drive_1_6CFF75A5-part6 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SServeRA_Drive_1_6CFF75A5-part2 / ext4 defaults 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SServeRA_Drive_1_6CFF75A5-part5 /home ext4 defaults 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SServeRA_Drive_2_4BB0A82C-part1 /home/alastair/mastermedia ext4 defaults 1 2
192.168.169.162:/Multimedia /home/alastair/qnapnas2 nfs defaults 0 0
The second drive referred to was mounted and used for multimedia when the original system was working. The same drive, with possibly the same ID, is now a different drive holding the cloned drive. I assume therefore that if I comment out the second /dev/disk/by-id line that should do the trick?
The IP is an NFS share mount that was also on the original system and I might as well comment that out for the time being.
Am I on the right track please?
Regards,
Budgie2
OK, sorry I missed the edit window. I was able to edit /etc/fstab to comment out the last two lines and all now seems to be OK with my original system on restored array.
Very many thanks for all the help. Sorry I am a slow learner and no doubt will come back for more help. I had all kinds of problems with permissions when using the live CD but as system is up again I should be able to back up before changing anything else.
Budgie2
Concentrating on the lines starting with /dev/by-id…
The first three lines show partitions on the same device.
Further down there is a partition on another device.
And there is the NFS one.
As they are shown here, there are no strange things to see. Assuming that those partitionsa do exist and that all the mountpoints do exist (the two inside /home/alastario/ should of course exist when /home is mounted), I see no problems.
Only you can decide which should be mounted or not. And indeed, as long as you are experimenting, the copmmenting out of the NFS one could be something you whish.
I do not understand you talking about two disks with the same id. The id belongs to the hardware (see the manufacturers name and a serial number in it). That can not be copied to another disk. The uuid can be copied, but you do not use that one. The same for the (volume) label.
I missed your last post above. Seems that you are satisfied for the moment.
Yes, backup before tinkering is always a good idea.