Re: USB disk shows up late at boot

[Andrew Reid <reidac@bellatlantic.net>]

On Monday 21 December 2009 15:52:29 Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have 2 internal ATA HDD's and 2 disks in external USB enclosures.
>
> When you boot (this is Sid) the 2 USB disks report their presence
> between the messages:
>
> 'Loading, please wait...'
> and
> 'Init 2.86 booting'
> in the very beginning of the boot process.
>
> Now the funny part: in my homegrown kernel both show up together. But
> with recent Debian kernel images only one shows up. I have a delay of 10
> secs. in initramfs-tools but that makes no difference.
>
> The 2nd USB disk shows up eventually, but after 'Init 2.86 booting' when
> it is too late to be of use by fstab.
>
> This isn't the first time I've asked this, but nobody seems to have an
> answer.

  It's likely the devices aren't being recognized in the initramfs --
possibly they require kernel modules which are not present by default.

  If you know which modules drive these devices, add them by name 
to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules (one module per line, I think), and
re-generate your initramfs with update-initramfs.  This should allow
the udev scan in the initramfs to see the devices, and set them
up earlier. 

  "Init 2.86 booting" is a very important milestone in the boot 
process, it marks the transition from initramfs activity to 
root file-system activity.  Anything you want to do *before* that
has to be in the initramfs.

  Or, as the other responder mentioned, you can just stick with 
a custom kernel.  I used to do that, but I like getting security
updates.

					-- A.

-- 
Andrew Reid / reidac@bellatlantic.net