USB Booting Woes

Mark Phillips mark at phillipsmarketing.biz
Sat Dec 10 08:57:31 MST 2016


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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