[SOLVED] Arch won't mount my hard drives correctly, problems at boot.

Sometimes (only sometimes) Arch Linux will have an error during bootup because my Linux drive gets mounted as sdb instead of sda. My NTFS Sata storage drives gets mounted in its place as sda.
When this happens, Arch Linux will stop booting at the "checking filesystems" step:
:: Checking Filesystems [BUSY]
/dev/sda3:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a corect ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
[FAIL]
**************** FILESYSTEM CHECK FAILED ****************
* Please repair manually and reboot. Note that the root *
* file system is currently mounted read-only. To remount *
* it read-write type: mount -n -o remount,rw / *
* When you exit the maintenance shell the system will *
* reboot automatically. *
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue):
And from there i have to remount my drives manually or restart the computer. Everytime I start the computer, I simply have to hope that my Linux drive will mount as sda. It's totally hit and miss.
Now, I know that my superblock is not corrupt. fsck is failing because it is looking for my linux filesystem on sda. It is encountering my NTFS Sata drive on sda instead of the expected Linux ext filesystem.
So how do I know that this is happening?
Well, after giving the root password, it shows the root prompt
[root@(none) ~]#
and i proceed to use the lshw command to see what's up with the drives:
[root@(none) ~]# lshw -short | grep /dev/
/0/6/0.0.0 /dev/sdb disk 120GB WDC WD1200JB-00E
/0/6/0.0.0/1 /dev/sdb1 volume 101MiB Linux filesystem partition
/0/6/0.0.0/2 /dev/sdb2 volume 258MiB Linux swap volume
/0/6/0.0.0/3 /dev/sdb3 volume 7506MiB EXT4 volume
/0/6/0.0.0/4 /dev/sdb4 volume 104GiB EXT4 volume
/0/6/0.1.0 /dev/sdc disk 81GB Maxtor 6Y080P0
/0/6/0.1.0/1 /dev/sdc1 volume 76GiB Windows NTFS volume
/0/8/0.0.0 /dev/sda disk 640GB Hitachi HDT72106
/0/8/0.0.0/1 /dev/sda1 volume 596GiB Windows NTFS volume
So, clearly, this shows that my Linux drive has gotten mounted as sdb and my NTFS Sata drive has gottem mounted as sda. It's totally random: sometimes they mount vice versa and the system boots just fine.
When Arch does happen to mount itself properly as sda and the system starts successfully, then the lshw command shows this:
[root@(none) ~]# lshw -short | grep /dev/
/0/6/0.0.0 /dev/sda disk 120GB WDC WD1200JB-00E
/0/6/0.0.0/1 /dev/sda1 volume 101MiB Linux filesystem partition
/0/6/0.0.0/2 /dev/sda2 volume 258MiB Linux swap volume
/0/6/0.0.0/3 /dev/sda3 volume 7506MiB EXT4 volume
/0/6/0.0.0/4 /dev/sda4 volume 104GiB EXT4 volume
/0/6/0.1.0 /dev/sdb disk 81GB Maxtor 6Y080P0
/0/6/0.1.0/1 /dev/sdb1 volume 76GiB Windows NTFS volume
/0/8/0.0.0 /dev/sdc disk 640GB Hitachi HDT72106
/0/8/0.0.0/1 /dev/sdc1 volume 596GiB Windows NTFS volume
The above correctly mounted format shows the drives in the same order as my Hard Disk boot priority in BIOS as well as in the same order as during the initial drive detection directly following the memory test (don't know if it has anything to do with it though).
So my question is this. How do I ensure that Arch Linux mounts itself as sda ALL of the time, and not randomly?
Or should I remove my sda entries in etc/fstab and let Arch determine where my Linux filesystems are? If so, how?
It's interesting to note that GRUB is set to boot Arch Linux from hd0, which should be sda.
It's also intriguing to note that if I take out my Sata drive, I never encounter this problem.
Last edited by trusktr (2010-06-15 07:49:31)

Thanks kgas, here's what i found out so far:
Alright so after rebooting, this is what i determined:
When Linux mounts the drives incorrectly (take note of the parts in bold, the short numbers are NTFS filesystems, long numbers the Linux filesystems):
[trusktr@rocketship ~]$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 01CA836D8BE82040 -> ../../[b]sdc1[/b]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 0ddf0e41-e7e6-4af5-b0e9-bc79a91b12eb -> ../../[b]sdb1[/b]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 92b88528-dd0f-4c1b-bcce-54084ef2aceb -> ../../[b]sdb4[/b]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 C838CF5838CF4462 -> ../../[b]sda1[/b]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 cdb33de5-0100-4c5f-a9b1-5c1a444e6eac -> ../../[b]sdb3[/b]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 d0a5d49d-169d-43ce-af0f-216dc4a9f604 -> ../../[b]sdb2[/b]
So an NTFS filesystem is mounted in sda instead of the Linux filesystem
When Linux mounts everything properly:
[trusktr@rocketship ~]$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 01CA836D8BE82040 -> ../../[b]sdb1[/b]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 0ddf0e41-e7e6-4af5-b0e9-bc79a91b12eb -> ../../[b]sda1[/b]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 92b88528-dd0f-4c1b-bcce-54084ef2aceb -> ../../[b]sda4[/b]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 C838CF5838CF4462 -> ../../[b]sdc1[/b]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 cdb33de5-0100-4c5f-a9b1-5c1a444e6eac -> ../../[b]sda3[/b]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 14 21:08 d0a5d49d-169d-43ce-af0f-216dc4a9f604 -> ../../[b]sda2[/b]
This doesn't tell us much except that I indeed do have uuid's for all the drives.
So, i guess as kgas said, i probably need to use the uuid in fstab so that Linux always knows which hard drive is the linux drive! In that case, only the uuid for the Linux drive will be necessary. For the other drives it wouldn't matter so much i guess since they don't contain the operating system.
Alright, i'll be back to determine if this fixes it!
Last edited by trusktr (2010-06-15 06:41:25)

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