Description of problem: An HP dc5750 mini-tower has eight ext3 partitions on /dev/sda (together with a swap partition, a FAT32 partition and several NTFS partitions). These are listed in /etc/fstab in the normal way, using LABEL= in the first column (though I don't think that matters). However, the /usr/local partition (/dev/sda7) doesn't get mounted properly at boot time. Everything seems to be OK... Syslog has the following lines: EXT3 FS on sda7, internal journal EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds And these commands all say it's mounted: $ egrep local /proc/mounts /dev/sda7 /usr/local ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0 # mount -l | grep local /dev/sda7 on /usr/local type ext3 (rw) [/usr/local] $ df -h /usr/local Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda7 7.8G 5.9G 1.6G 80% /usr/local But wait... those numbers look suspiciously familiar: $ df -h /usr Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda6 7.8G 5.9G 1.6G 80% /usr So now, try this: # umount /usr/local umount: /dev/sda7: not mounted umount: /dev/sda7: not mounted # fsck -f -n /dev/sda7 fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006) e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006) fsck.ext3: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sda7 Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program? But this works: # mount /usr/local $ df -h /usr/local Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda7 3.9G 33M 3.7G 1% /usr/local $ ls -A /usr/local lost+found # umount /usr/local $ df -h /usr/local Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda6 7.8G 5.9G 1.6G 80% /usr What this means is that /usr/local wasn't even mounted properly when Fedora was installed, because the filesystem rpm contains directories that have been installed in the /local directory on the /usr filesystem rather than on the /usr/local filesystem where they belong. This system was installed by my colleague from a Fedora 7 DVD on a clean disk and is being cloned (using, I think, Norton Ghost); every clone exhibits the same behaviour. I don't think anything unusual happened during the install, though he may have partitioned the disk using Partition Magic rather than using the dialogue that comes up during the install process (though he'll have had to type in the mount point of each partition at that point). I don't know how to debug this, but I can supply more information on request. What could be going wrong? For now I've had to resort to putting "mount /usr/local" in /etc/rc.local... Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.21-1.3228.fc7 util-linux-2.13-0.51.fc7 e2fsprogs-1.39-11 How reproducible: Always (on this particular installation) Steps to Reproduce: See above.
Created attachment 159068 [details] The /etc/fstab file
Having been presented with another system with a similar problem (this time an HP nw9440 laptop which wouldn't mount /var/tmp) I had a brain wave. Examination of the fstab from comment 1 reveals that /usr/local is listed before /usr (quite a long way before, in fact). Switching the order seems to have fixed the problem. So we have two potential bugs: (a) that the installer wrote the fstab in this order in the first place (and I've no idea in what order the partitions were typed in during the install, but to a large extent that shouldn't matter); and (b) that the system gets into this inconsistent state when it's in that order. (This may not be a bug, since it seems /usr/local is successfully mounted and then the mount of /usr shadows it. Only question is why the /usr/local mount point existed in the root partition...)
That's wrong, the order of entries in the /etc/fstab is really important. Reassigning to anaconda...
This is fixed in the development tree.