Latest Initrd not recognising USB storage devices?

Question

Just installed 2.6.30 with all the necessary files. Everything seemed fine, except for one thing: my external USB hard drive is no longer recognised on boot. Here is my fstab and my mkinitcpio.conf.
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid 0 0
#/dev/cdrom /media/cd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
#/dev/dvd /media/dvd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
#/dev/fd0 /media/fl auto user,noauto 0 0
UUID=139cf76d-425a-4c40-a5b1-bbbf22533d9a /boot ext4 defaults 0 1
UUID=4eddd177-23f6-49ab-a8ad-d3e1303133e0 / ext4 defaults 0 1
UUID=ED83-B8D4 /media/flash vfat rw,user,noauto 0 0
#UUID=ac46c6ae-d9eb-47d4-809b-19a2484b3133 /iomega ext4 rw,noexec,nosuid 0 1
UUID=ac46c6ae-d9eb-47d4-809b-19a2484b3133 /media/iomega ext4 rw,user,noauto 0 0
UUID=da9e741f-3525-47c6-8c7f-edf1ded00e7a swap swap defaults 0 0
As you can see from this, I originally had my external usb drive mounted on /iomega @ boot. However, since that no longer works, I have changed it to /media/iomega and let HAL mount it automatically when I fire up GNOME (the same way I have my flash drive set up). I used the original line with 2.6.29 with no problems.
The strange thing is, the device is there, because, when it fails, I go into single user mode, remount / read-write and then run mount -a and the device appears with no errors. If I change the line so it doesn't do an fsck on boot, it doesn't mount the device, but I do get an error saying the device is not there. I can then mount it manually at the command prompt.
The device is shown in /etc/blkid.tab and in /dev/disk/by-uuid.
# vim:set ft=sh
# MODULES
# The following modules are loaded before any boot hooks are
# run. Advanced users may wish to specify all system modules
# in this array. For instance:
# MODULES="piix ide_disk reiserfs"
MODULES=""
# BINARIES
# This setting includes, into the CPIO image, and additional
# binaries a given user may wish. This is run first, so may
# be used to override the actual binaries used in a given hook.
# (Existing files are NOT overwritten is already added)
# BINARIES are dependancy parsed, so you may safely ignore libraries
BINARIES=""
# FILES
# This setting is similar to BINARIES above, however, files are added
# as-is and are not parsed in anyway. This is useful for config files.
# Some users may wish to include modprobe.conf for custom module options,
# like so:
# FILES="/etc/modprobe.conf"
FILES=""
# HOOKS
# This is the most important setting in this file. The HOOKS control the
# modules and scripts added to the image, and what happens at boot time.
# Order is important, and it is recommended that you do not change the
# order in which HOOKS are added. Run 'mkinitcpio -H <hook name>' for
# help on a given hook.
# 'base' is _required_ unless you know precisely what you are doing.
# 'udev' is _required_ in order to automatically load modules
# 'modload' may be used in place of 'udev', but is not recommended
# 'filesystems' is _required_ unless you specify your fs modules in MODULES
# Examples:
# This setup specifies all modules in the MODULES setting above.
# No raid, lvm2, or encrypted root is needed.
# HOOKS="base"
# This setup will autodetect all modules for your system and should
# work as a sane default
# HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata filesystems"
# This is identical to the above, except the old ide subsystem is
# used for IDE devices instead of the new pata subsystem.
# HOOKS="base udev autodetect ide scsi sata filesystems"
# This setup will generate a 'full' image which supports most systems.
# No autodetection is done.
# HOOKS="base udev pata scsi sata usb filesystems"
# This setup assembles an pata raid array with an encrypted root FS.
# Note: See 'mkinitcpio -H raid' for more information on raid devices.
# HOOKS="base udev pata raid encrypt filesystems"
# This setup loads an lvm2 volume group on a usb device.
# HOOKS="base udev usb lvm2 filesystems"
HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata usb keymap filesystems"
# COMPRESSION
# Use this to compress the initramfs image. With kernels earlier than
# 2.6.30, only gzip is supported, which is also the default. Newer kernels
# support gzip, bzip2 and lzma.
#COMPRESSION="gzip"
#COMPRESSION="bzip2"
#COMPRESSION="lzma"
This is essentially the same as I had it in 2.6.29. I did initially use LZMA, since that gives slightly faster compression & decompression, but changed it back in case it was a timing issue (and rebuilt initrd). No joy. I also tried usbdelay=10 on boot, but again no difference.
This isn't exactly a "show-stopper", since the device functions normally otherwise and everything else is fine, but it is annoying. I would much rather have this device available automatically on boot, so that it gets checked when the max mount count comes up.

Answer 1

This was the bug update I received today:
FS#15282 - [mkinitcpio] Latest initrd not recognising usb storage devices?
User who did this - Thomas Bächler (brain0)
You can never rely on external hard drives to show up "in time".
The difference was that adding the "usb" hook to mkinitcpio used to add a 6 second delay on boot by default, this doesn't happen anymore. I think external drives simply don't belong in fstab, because there's too many possible race conditions. If you insist, you can try to force the usb storage driver to scan for devices sooner after detection, see the delay_use parameter to the usb-storage module.
You're going to have to modify the delay_use parameter to get it to work. Be prepared for race conditions, though. I didn't bother myself as it wasn't a show stopper for me, so I've advised that it can be closed as a non-bug.
ETA: usbdelay=10 doesn't work as that flag is apparently no longer recognised for some reason.
ETTA: I've always used UUID in the fstab because udev can remap devices on boot (I've had fstab not recognising devices because of this).
In case some people don't know, to see what the uuid for a device is, use the following:
sudo tune2fs -l <device-name>
Last edited by jamesbannon (2009-06-28 18:30:23)