Trouble booting from USB 3.0 Device

[numb7rs]

So I've got myself a nice little Atom board and mini case for the perfect HTPC build. Due to the low number of SATA ports on the board, I've chosen to boot from a USB 3.0 Flash drive. A Super Talent 16GB to be precise. Downloaded the Maverick .iso, used unetbootin to put it onto a second USB key, and installed to the Flash drive. No problems so far. Reboot to finish installation, and I get thrown to a BusyBox shell, after being told that it:

"Gave up waiting for root device."

and:

"ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/[hex-code] does not exist. Dropping to a shell!"

Harumpf.

I have:
- Checked that the correct uuid is given.
- Installed from a CD instead of the USB image.
- Booted a Live CD to check the file system accessibilty of the Flash Drive
- Tried manually loading the linux kernel from within a grub shell.

Note that I'm a bit of a beginner, so may not have done that last bit correctly.

As a last ditch attempt to get it to boot, I moved the drive from a USB 3.0 port to a USB 2 port. The system booted and was perfectly useable. What. Using this, I installed all available updates

Any ideas how I can get this working over USB 3.0?

How can the device not be found when grub was loaded from it? This logic also applies to the motherboard not supporting booting from USB 3.0.


A curiosity: from the grub shell, the drive appears as three partitions:

hd0
hdo,msdos1
hd0,msdos5

Why are these called msdos when Ubuntu formatted the drive in ext4?

[oldfred]

msdos or MBR is the partitioning type. One other alternative is gpt others relate to totally different type of computers. gpt is used by Apple and some Microsoft servers, but windows will not boot from a gpt partitioned drive unless you boot with efi not BIOS. MBR maxs out at 2TiB, so with very large drives you need to convert to gpt.

Not sure why USB3 would not work. It sounds more like a BIOS issue or do you have efi?

[numb7rs]

Thanks for the reply. And for explaining why the partitions are labelled msdos.

I do not have EFI, just a plain BIOS. I cannot find any options relating to USB 3.0 in the BIOS, which is the latest version for the motherboard. If it is the BIOS, then how is grub loaded?

[oldfred]

Computer booting with BIOS & MBR has not really changed for 20 years. It started with just floppy drives, then added hard drives. Hard drives would only boot from the primary master. BIOS was just smart enough to know to jump to the MBR of the primary master hard drive for more code to keep booting. Then they started adding all the other devices as boot devices but a flash drive has a MBR or what looks like a MBR as far as I know. If it works for USB2 I would think it should work for USB3, but do not know what other changes they have made. I thought it was backwards compatible.

[numb7rs]

Yes, the drive is treated as a normal HDD, with an MBR and swap partition. It works fine in USB2, I can't think of a reason it won't in USB 3. As far as the software is concerned, I'd have thought it was just seen as a standard USB drive, but with faster speeds.

[schlameel]

I am experiencing the same problem. GRUB loads and lets me select the OS to boot. The Ubuntu boot screen comes up and there is little activity beyond there until the error message comes up.

I have a Thinkpad W510 running Ubuntu 10.10. The USB ports work once the system is booted, though I only have a 2.0 device in those ports. I will try to get a Live CD and see if the 3.0 drive works on the 3.0 ports.

lsusb yields:

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 1058:0701 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. 
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 17ef:480f Lenovo Integrated Webcam [R5U877]
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0a5c:217f Broadcom Corp. Bluetooth Controller
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1058:0730 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 003 is the 3.0 ports, I have a second USB drive plugged in there.

usb-devices seems to recognize the bus as 3.0:

T:  Bus=03 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=5000 MxCh= 4
D:  Ver= 3.00 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=03 MxPS= 9 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d6b ProdID=0003 Rev=02.06
S:  Manufacturer=Linux 2.6.35-23-generic xhci_hcd
S:  Product=xHCI Host Controller
S:  SerialNumber=0000:0f:00.0
C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=0mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub

Perhaps the issue is GRUB? I'll do what I can to track that down.

[numb7rs]

Hi schlameel, nice to know I'm not the only one.

What sort of device are you trying to boot from?

Doing some diggin, the W510 has an NEC USB 3.0 chipset, same as my motherboard. I have a suspicion this may be a driver related issue. I have been unable to find any standalone drivers for ubuntu for this chipset, as they're supposed to be included in the kernel. I'm going to keep digging.

Let me know if you have any luck.

numb7rs

[schlameel]

Good find. I am using a Western Digital Passport I think. 1TB drive partitioned with about 100 GB for Ubuntu.

[mgscox]

... Reboot to finish installation, and I get thrown to a BusyBox shell, after being told that it:

"Gave up waiting for root device."

and:

"ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/[hex-code] does not exist. Dropping to a shell!"

Harumpf.

I have exactly the same situation, so it's not you - as far as I can tell, you can't boot Ubuntu from an external USB3 HDD.
Incidentally, Ubuntu can see USB3 drives, just can't boot from them; boot from a live CD and you'll see that drive is recognised and available. It seems to indicate to me that the problem specific to booting and buried deep within the bootstrap or kernel.
I've searched the interweb high and low and no-one has so far indicated they've been successful.
Hopefully that last sentence will prompt someone to confirm that they've done it, so we can all then quiz them how they achieved it

[gordintoronto]

Is the flash drive a Super Talent Express DUO 16 GB?