Drives in Ubuntu Server changing Drive letters every boot

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Peder

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Well now i'm having a problem again.

Seems everytime i boot the drive letters keep changing.

I have 6 drives in the server 2 are EXT3. 4 are NTFS.

Here is what it does:
Drive Letter : Size of Drive : Location of Drive : Filesystem : Connector type

First Round (New)
/dev/sdc : 120GB : On-Board (extra) : NTFS : IDE
/dev/sda : 200gb : PCI SataCard : NTFS : Sata
/dev/sdb : 1TB : PCI Sata Card : ext3: SATA
/dev/sdd : 80GB : On-Board : ext3 : IDE
/dev/sde : 80GB : On-Board : NTFS : IDE
/dev/sdf : 250GB : On-Board : NTFS : IDE

Second (Origignal)
/dev/sda : 200gb : PCI SataCard : NTFS : Sata
/dev/sdb : 1TB : PCI Sata Card : ext3: SATA
/dev/sdc : 120GB : On-Board (extra) : NTFS : IDE
/dev/sdd : 80GB : On-Board : ext3 : IDE
/dev/sde : 80GB : On-Board : NTFS : IDE
/dev/sdf : 250GB : On-Board : NTFS : IDE

And it switches at random between the two... and my drives don't load properly if they are different places... can anyone tell me why this happens?

Thanx
Peder
 
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Yikes.... I've honestly never had this happen to me before.
So each time you boot your drives are mounted during start-up but in the wrong order... you should be able to specify somewhere what your drives are mounted as, but I'm not quite sure how to do that.
 
yeah... and it seems to be random...

One time it will be right the next time it won't.

Its just the sda sdb etc that moves around...

I can mount the drives properly but i can't change fstab everytime i restart my server (we have allot of power outages so it can't stay on for long)
 
 
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i see i have to use UUID's but those letters are damn long any idea how to do a copy and paste or even how to activate the gui in the ubuntu?
 
Peder said:
or even how to activate the gui in the ubuntu?
Click to expand...

You need to install Xorg & a desktop or window manager.

There is a command line utility to generate the UUIDs (somewhere mentioned in those links). Simply pipe the output to a text file and then edit it with a text editor like nano. Can't remember how to copy and paste in the command line.
 
You just need the console mouse driver, gpm.

Install it and start it, in Gentoo it is:
/etc/init.d/gpm start

Now you just hilight the section you want copied, and middle click to paste.
 
failing that, try login to the server from another desktop pc through ssh (windows putty works fine) then you'll have copy paste.
as for the drives swop.. eish. Wonder why it's doing it on the pci card though.
 
Peder said:
Well now i'm having a problem again.

Seems everytime i boot the drive letters keep changing.

I have 6 drives in the server 2 are EXT3. 4 are NTFS.

Here is what it does:
Drive Letter : Size of Drive : Location of Drive : Filesystem : Connector type

First Round (New)
/dev/sdc : 120GB : On-Board (extra) : NTFS : IDE
/dev/sda : 200gb : PCI SataCard : NTFS : Sata
/dev/sdb : 1TB : PCI Sata Card : ext3: SATA
/dev/sdd : 80GB : On-Board : ext3 : IDE
/dev/sde : 80GB : On-Board : NTFS : IDE
/dev/sdf : 250GB : On-Board : NTFS : IDE

Second (Origignal)
/dev/sda : 200gb : PCI SataCard : NTFS : Sata
/dev/sdb : 1TB : PCI Sata Card : ext3: SATA
/dev/sdc : 120GB : On-Board (extra) : NTFS : IDE
/dev/sdd : 80GB : On-Board : ext3 : IDE
/dev/sde : 80GB : On-Board : NTFS : IDE
/dev/sdf : 250GB : On-Board : NTFS : IDE

And it switches at random between the two... and my drives don't load properly if they are different places... can anyone tell me why this happens?

Thanx
Peder
Click to expand...
I dont quite get the problem. Do you have a problem with the order of the list?

When I look at them, they look rather the same every time. At least in your 2 examples.

Eg.

Round1:
/dev/sdc is listed 1st but its the 120gb drive.

Round2:
/dev/sdc is listed 3rd, but its still the 120gb drive.

So if you use the actual device name, it stayed the same, was just listed in a different order?
 
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Tinuva said:
I dont quite get the problem. Do you have a problem with the order of the list?
... if you use the actual device name, it stayed the same, was just listed in a different order?
Click to expand...

yeah on second look I'm seeing the same thing.

Maybe it's the mount points ( "drive letters" ) the OP is picking up on.
 
I must admit, this is the first time I've heard of a Unix-based system using drive letters.

For mounting drives with UUIDs (Kubuntu wants this), I've written a mini-tutorial in this rant, under the heading "Mounting Windows disks in Kubuntu", which includes a bit to get the UUID into a text file.
 
Drake2007 said:
yeah on second look I'm seeing the same thing.

Maybe it's the mount points ( "drive letters" ) the OP is picking up on.
Click to expand...


the mount points would be determined by the fstab and wouldn't change. i have to say it is not clear what the problem is here.
 
alternative to UUIDs

An alternative to UUIDs are volume labels.
By making us of "tune2fs -L" and "mkfs.ntfs -L" one can set the volume label of different partitions. (Be careful with these commands. Read their man pages first)

man tune2fs extract:
"The volume label can be used by mount(8), fsck(8), and /etc/fstab(5) (and possibly others) by specifying LABEL=volume_label instead of a block special device name like /dev/hda5."

Once partitions has been labeled you can also look browse /dev/disk/by-label to see the relationship between the labels and block device names.

This makes remembering mount point easier. Also this allows you to use a common disk image between computers with SATA and PATA interfaces without making special changes to the fstab to keep the mounting working (assuming the disks in the different machines have similar volume labels).
 
What do you guys recon is better?

To make the PC boot the linux desktop edition (for the GUI) or the Server?

Then with the desktop i disable the gui when i am finished setting everything up.

Then if the desktop is a better idea how do i make it boot without the GUI normally? and only activate the GUI when needed...
 
Peder said:
What do you guys recon is better?

To make the PC boot the linux desktop edition (for the GUI) or the Server?

Then with the desktop i disable the gui when i am finished setting everything up.

Then if the desktop is a better idea how do i make it boot without the GUI normally? and only activate the GUI when needed...
Click to expand...

You can do that. It's not hard to tell xorg not to start automatically each time... and it does make maintenance a lot easier.
 
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