USB Booting Woes

Sat Dec 10 11:20:11 MST 2016

Eric,

It has been an issue for a long time (years). I have been ignoring it, and
it finally bubbled up to the top of the issue list. ;)

Mark

On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 9:56 AM, Eric Oyen <eric.oyen at icloud.com> wrote:

> has this always been an issue, or did it start relatively recently. if the
> latter, you might have something on board going bad on you.
>
> -eric
> Home office of the Technomage guild.
>
> On Dec 10, 2016, at 8:57 AM, Mark Phillips 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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