From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Apr 1 12:38:56 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6FADB1065676 for ; Thu, 1 Apr 2010 12:38:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from psteele@maxiscale.com) Received: from server505.appriver.com (server505c.appriver.com [98.129.35.7]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 386098FC0A for ; Thu, 1 Apr 2010 12:38:55 +0000 (UTC) X-Policy: GLOBAL - maxiscale.com X-Primary: psteele@maxiscale.com X-Note: This Email was scanned by AppRiver SecureTide X-ALLOW: psteele@maxiscale.com ALLOWED X-Virus-Scan: V- X-Note: Spam Tests Failed: X-Country-Path: UNITED STATES->UNITED STATES->UNITED STATES X-Note-Sending-IP: 98.129.23.14 X-Note-Reverse-DNS: ht01.exg5.exghost.com X-Note-WHTLIST: psteele@maxiscale.com X-Note: User Rule Hits: X-Note: Global Rule Hits: G179 G180 G181 G182 G186 G187 G198 G285 X-Note: Encrypt Rule Hits: X-Note: Mail Class: ALLOWEDSENDER X-Note: Headers Injected Received: from [98.129.23.14] (HELO ht01.exg5.exghost.com) by server505.appriver.com (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 5.3.2) with ESMTPS id 34839392 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:38:54 -0500 Received: from mbx03.exg5.exghost.com ([169.254.1.132]) by ht01.exg5.exghost.com ([98.129.23.14]) with mapi; Thu, 1 Apr 2010 07:38:54 -0500 From: Peter Steele To: "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 07:38:53 -0500 Thread-Topic: USB disk boot issues Thread-Index: AcrRmEnFELHrWzl4SqCdPGV/29vf8A== Message-ID: <7B9397B189EB6E46A5EE7B4C8A4BB7CB3B65FA89@MBX03.exg5.exghost.com> Accept-Language: en-US Content-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: acceptlanguage: en-US MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Subject: USB disk boot issues X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:38:56 -0000 We clone systems from specially prepared USB flash sticks and this all work= s well, except that occasionally the flash stick fails to boot. It fails at= the "mount root" step, saying that it cannot mount the specified root part= ition. We use a labeled partition on the disk to make it device independent= , so we have something like /dev/label/usbroot / ufs rw 1 1 in our fstab. When it fails it doesn't recognize this device, and even ? do= esn't list it as one of the available devices. If we reboot, it's likely th= e problem won't occur again. It seems to be some kind of timing issue. Is t= his a known problem?