USB Storage, SLES8 and Booting...

[Michael Williams_6]

Hello all,

I have an interesting problem. I have a SuSE Enterprise Linux running on a 2.4 kernel.

I'm trying to create an init script that will mount a USB key-disk and run a script on there. The point of this is that having invoked DR last week, building servers takes too long, so we're putting together a ghost image we can quickly restore and the key-disk will contain the IP Addresses and Hostnames of systems to allow us to effectively recover a system in much reduced time.

Anyway, the mount command on our box is below:
/bin/mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt

However, when I try this as an init script in the boot.d directory (it's S11 in boot.d) I get the following error:

Can't locate module block-major-8

This works when the system is fully loaded, and I've made a dependency on boot.ldconfig, but to no avail. I've also tried adding modprobe usb-storage and modprobe vfat in the start-up script, with no difference.

Does anyone know what I need to load to get this working? I'm not that good with modprobe and linux modules, but need to get this working asap!

Thanks for you help guys!

[Johannes Krackowizer_1]

hi michael,

the problem is that you will need to load the usb-drivers/diskdrivers. could you post a bit more about your hardware (usb-chip, external harddisk, usb-diskdriver, ...) try to run a lsmod and post it's output so that we can see what modules your linux is using in normal operation with attached and mounted usb-disk.

best regards,

johannes

[Bruce Copeland]

I think Johannes is correct. I ran into a somewhat analogous problem on one of my systems after upgrading from a distribution with a 2.4 kernel to a distribution with a 2.6 kernel because the module names changed. I tried modprobe usb-storage and several other module combinations. The 'block device' errors finally went away when I did modprobe for the usb controller. There are drivers for several different controllers, so you'll need to figure out which controller your hardware has.

Bruce

[Jan Sladky]

Hi Michael,
on my 2.6.4-52-default kernel form SuSe Proffesional I have to load usb_storage modul

and AFTER THAT instert usb key into port,
in other case I'm getting
mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist

I know it isn't solving your problem, but maybe
it will help you in finding solution

br Jan

[Jan Sladky]

Yet another thing

check whether scsi emulation modul is loaded

full path on my box is:
/lib/modules/2.6.4-52-default/kernel/drivers/scsi/sg.ko

br Jan