USB Booting Woes

Mark Phillips mark at phillipsmarketing.biz
Sat Dec 10 11:18:50 MST 2016


On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Anon Anon <lokotejones at gmail.com> wrote:

> Disk label type DoS and NTFS? I bet if you could reformat those two drives
> to ext4 or something more Linux friendly your problem would evaporate. I
> bet there is a hidden file in the NTFS that the computer is choking on.
>

sdb is formatted as ext4. Not sure why fdisk shows dos. When I plug the
drive into my ubuntu laptop it shows as ext4. Also,

root at orca:/home/mark# df -T /dev/sdb1
Filesystem     Type  1K-blocks       Used  Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1      ext4 2884121824 1265247048 1472346776  47% /media/backup


>
> https://superuser.com/questions/37512/how-to-read-
> ext4-partitions-on-windows
>
> If you need to deal with windows on those drives, look at different
> options. But I'd see about removing NTFS as a headache.
>

I am using fuse to read the NTFS drive, and it works very well. I trade
movies etc with others who all have Windoz machines, so moving all the
files to ext4 would be a pain.

root at orca:/home/mark# df -T /dev/sdc1
Filesystem     Type     1K-blocks      Used  Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc1      fuseblk 1953480704 825650176 1127830528  43% /media/plex

Also, the NTFS drive is not causing the issue. It is the ext4 drive. If I
take out the ext4 drive the system boots without any issues. If I add the
ext4 drive and take out the NTFS drive, the system hangs.

>
> I'm sure someone with more experience in drive management will chime in
> though. Some people still like ext2 and ext3 as options as well.
>
> Got a drive you could format as four, toss some files on, and try and see?
> If it boots with it plugged in I'd bet that's the problem.
>
> On Dec 10, 2016 8:57 AM, "Mark Phillips" <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz>
> wrote:
>
>> There are three disks in the system. sda = internal hard drive, sdb =
>> backup USB, sdc = plex USB.
>>
>> The hard drive is the only one that is marked as bootable. It hangs on
>> the backup USB and not the plex USB.
>>
>> It still hangs if I disable all but the hard drive for booting.
>>
>> root at orca:/home/mark# fdisk -l /dev/sda
>> Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
>> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
>> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
>> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
>> Disklabel type: dos
>> Disk identifier: 0x00043575
>>
>> Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
>> /dev/sda1  *          2048 1920129023 1920126976 915.6G 83 Linux
>> /dev/sda2       1920131070 1953523711   33392642  15.9G  5 Extended
>> /dev/sda5       1920131072 1953523711   33392640  15.9G 82 Linux swap /
>> Solaris
>>
>> Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
>>
>>
>> root at orca:/home/mark# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
>> Disk /dev/sdb: 2.7 TiB, 3000558944256 bytes, 732558336 sectors
>> Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
>> Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
>> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
>> Disklabel type: dos
>> Disk identifier: 0x00028375
>>
>> Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
>> /dev/sdb1         256 732558335 732558080  2.7T 83 Linux
>>
>>
>> root at orca:/home/mark# fdisk -l /dev/sdc
>> Disk /dev/sdc: 1.8 TiB, 2000365289472 bytes, 3906963456 sectors
>> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
>> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>> Disklabel type: dos
>> Disk identifier: 0x48f9a2e9
>>
>> Device     Boot Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type
>> /dev/sdc1        2048 3906963455 3906961408  1.8T  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
>> root at orca:/home/mark#
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 8:28 AM, Anon Anon <lokotejones at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> What does the partition structure look like on the USB drives? Are any
>>> of the partitions marked as bootable mistakenly? I'd probably check the
>>> drives first. Then I'd remove drives and get into the bios and see about
>>> disabling all external boot options...
>>>
>>> This may also be a good time to investigate a bios update if you have
>>> never done it. I ascribe to the don't fix unless broken school on bios but
>>> this may be a time to fix moment.
>>>
>>> On Dec 10, 2016 08:23, "Mark Phillips" <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have an old laptop running Linux version 4.8.0-1-amd64 (Debian
>>>> 5.4.1-3) that I use as a "headless" server for backups and Plex. It has two
>>>> USB drives attached to it for the backups and the media files.
>>>>
>>>> I have issues whenever I reboot the laptop. It appears to be trying to
>>>> boot off the backup USB drive for hours, then gives up and goes to the
>>>> internal hard drive and boots the rest of the way. It freezes in the
>>>> initial bios boot up screen. F2 and F12 do not respond...it is as if the
>>>> machine is frozen or dead, but eventually it does complete booting up. The
>>>> last entry in the bios screen is the name of the back up USB drive, then it
>>>> hangs for a long time. Eventually it gets to the next entry for the bios
>>>> screen which is enabling the touchpad, and continues to boot from there.
>>>>
>>>> * In the bios, I changed the boot order to start with the internal hard
>>>> drive, then the CD/DVD, and then the USB devices are disabled.
>>>>
>>>> * I moved mounting the usb drives from /etc/fstab to autofs, which
>>>> seems to work just fine. Once the machine is running, I can access the two
>>>> drives. I had the same booting issues when the drives were listed in
>>>> /etc/fstab.
>>>>
>>>> * If I remove the backup USB drive and then reboot, the laptop boots
>>>> normally and does not hang in the initial bios screen.
>>>>
>>>> * I tried moving the backup USB drive to another port (there are four
>>>> in the laptop), but nothing changes.
>>>>
>>>> Any thoughts you might have on fixing this annoyance would be greatly
>>>> appreciated!
>>>>
>>>> Mark
>>>>
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>>>
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