11.04 cannot mount two of my disks

[reuben]

I did a fresh install of 11.04. It didn't let me choose custom mount points for my disks, so I left non-system partitions unmounted in the installer. Big mistake. It seemingly screwed with two of my disks. I can see them in disk utility, but disk utility cannot identify partition information. And mount does not work:


@fridge:~$ sudo mount /dev/sde1 /m2 -t ext4
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sde1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so


@fridge:~$ sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /m2 -t ext2
mount: /dev/sdc1 already mounted or /m2 busy


sde1 _is_ ext4, and sdc1 _is not_ mounted. Can you help me recover these?

[dabl]

First, make new mount points in /mnt. As examples:


sudo mdkir -p /mnt/firstdisk

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/seconddisk

of course you can use whatever name you want for the mount point.

Second, get the UUIDs for the disks (partitions actually):


sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list

Note the UUID numbers for your non-mounted disk partitions. Then you can edit (with root privileges) the file /etc/fstab and add a line for each partition to be automatically mounted. For example:


UUID=ec21f5b3-7fd4-4f4b-af8d-cf787b147ae8 /mnt/firstdisk ext4 defaults,noatime 0 0


Once you have saved the edits to /etc/fstab, you can mount the drives with


sudo mount -a

verify that they are mounted correctly with


sudo mount

[reuben]

See above. They won't mount.

sdc1 gives me the error that it's already mounted (it's not, and won't umount).

sde1 won't mount because mount doesn't recognize the file type.

I should also mention that they do not show up in /dev/disk/by-uuid or in blkdid. They do show up in disk utility and gparted, but not as recognized partitions.

Thanks

[dabl]

Please post the output of these:


sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list


cat /etc/fstab

[reuben]

device fs_type label mount point UUID
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda3 ext4 /m3 b8276702-92c8-4f3e-98dd-b634fcbcf707
/dev/sda5 ext4 / ae823574-8ab0-4e39-8f17-afc96a359d1f
/dev/sdb5 ext4 /tmp 7f38db62-17b6-4491-bed7-cc20aa5eb5bd
/dev/sdb6 ext4 /home 0b58f9d5-8779-46fd-ba2c-d4209317122c
/dev/sdd1 ext4 /m1 0e5312d7-4f5e-41b2-b049-c70df2dcf10b
/dev/sdf1 ext4 backup1 /media/backup1 7b33d320-e3da-4dab-94b1-d8b3fb89191f
/dev/sdl1 ext4 backup2 /media/backup2 74985420-631b-4d30-ad4e-76b3ccbfd60b
/dev/mapper/cryptswap1
swap (not mounted) a5963c09-f757-4b6f-a5ab-294dd4abefd9



UUID=ae823574-8ab0-4e39-8f17-afc96a359d1f / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /home was on /dev/sdc6 during installation
UUID=0b58f9d5-8779-46fd-ba2c-d4209317122c /home ext4 defaults 0 2
# /tmp was on /dev/sdc5 during installation
UUID=7f38db62-17b6-4491-bed7-cc20aa5eb5bd /tmp ext4 defaults 0 2
UUID=0e5312d7-4f5e-41b2-b049-c70df2dcf10b /m1 ext4 defaults 0 2
UUID=b8276702-92c8-4f3e-98dd-b634fcbcf707 /m3 ext4 defaults 0 2
#/dev/sdc1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/mapper/cryptswap1 none swap sw 0 0

[dabl]

How many are USB drives?

[reuben]

Two:


/dev/sdf1 ext4 backup1 /media/backup1 7b33d320-e3da-4dab-94b1-d8b3fb89191f
/dev/sdl1 ext4 backup2 /media/backup2 74985420-631b-4d30-ad4e-76b3ccbfd60b

[dabl]

No need to repeat myself: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=10727685&postcount=2

If you will do this, I think you'll fix it:

1. SAFELY REMOVE the two USB hard disks, and also remove any CD that you might have in the optical drive

2. In a terminal,
cd /media to /media

3.
ls to see the existing mount points

4.
sudo rm -rf every mount point that you see in /media. For example
sudo rm -rf backup1

5. Now reboot your system, with the USB drives NOT connected. When the system is up and you are logged in, then connect ONE of the USB drives. It should be automatically mounted on /media. If that works OK, then connect the second USB drive.

Just leave /etc/fstab alone, wrt USB hard drives. And don't ever just yank out the connector -- always use "Safely Remove".

[reuben]

To be clear, the USB drives are not the ones I'm missing, and they were mounting fine on boot.

However, I tried the experiment you outlined - unfortunately with no success. Same deal with both of the "bad" drives.

Disk Utility will let me repartition / reformat them, and I may do that given that I (think I) have everything backed up. Still, I'm going to give it a couple days in case I can file a meaningful bug on launchpad about this.

[reuben]

I fixed this by fscking the disks.

E.g.

sudo fsck.ext4 -y /dev/sdc1

After doing this, they mounted just fine.