Can't Access HDA1

[Sanman99]

This has probably been asked before, but I can't find the answer, and I have limited time to find the answer. I can't figure out how to access my hard drive's files. I keep trying to mount the Hard Drive (HDA1), but it gives me this error:

Unable to mount device
Error org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure

I will probably need to use this bootable CD on some other computers also, but I don't have access to those computers yet. I don't know if there is something I am doing wrong, or maybe it's just my computer. My computer boots up just fine, but I can't access the drive from Knoppix. I am using the latest stable version of knoppix.

Is there something I should type in Terminal Emulator :? ? Thanks

[umbra037]

Bump.

I'm having the exact same problem (except my drive is named something else). Can anyone please help?

[OErjan]

weird, I just click the desktop icon and the file manager pops up, I use FAT for file system though...

[mbagni]

Hi all,

I have investigated the problem. The /etc/fstab file is dynamically built at every reboot (NOT ALWAYS SEE LATER) by the script /usr/sbin/rebuildfstab which takes care to popilate the directory /media with the proper mount points (es. /media/sda1, /media/sda2, /media/hdc1 etc.).

It is the failure in populating this directory the source of your (and mine) problem. I have tried to launch the script after bootstrap in a root terminal but the script checks the current filesystems (from /proc/partitions) against the current /etc/fstab (which has been correctly populated) and refuses to re-create the mount points in /media.

I am still working on the problem since it seems that there is another task that takes care to CLEAN the /media directory at every reboot so my temptative to call rebuildfstab in my /etc/rc.local has not solved the problem since, although I am sure that the call has regenerated the content of the directory /media, there is the second cleaning task that has deleted the newly created mount points just after their creation.

I am still investigating to find out what is this son-of-a-program that cleans that directory in order to address the problem properly.

If there is someone of the KNOPPIX Team that would kindly help us he/she is welcome.

In my case the problem shows up in the version booting from an USB ket with a persistent user disk (knoppix-data.img).

Cheers

[nvnohi]

I had the same issue and it was caused because the NTFS drive (hard drive) was "in use" by Windows even though Windows wasn't running. This was supposedly caused by an improper shutdown (which in fact did occur due to a trojan). Whatever the cause, though, this is what I did to fix:

open a command line
type in: su root
type in: mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o force [where sda1 is your hard drive, it may be different than sda1]
This should force the ntfs drive to mount regardless of being "in use"

If you're sketchy about trying this right off, try: mount /dev/sda1
This should give you some additional options if it won't mount, and you might find something similar to the above but with a variation that might work better for you.

Hope this helps someone in the future. I was lucky enough to stumble across someone in the office familiar with Linux...

[Harry Kuhman]

I generally keep quiet in the HDD install forum because people who post here just don't want to hear what I have to say. But I feel that the "advice" being given here should not be allowed to pass without comment. So far every version of Knoppix up to 6 has had problems writing to NTFS. While some people claim that they can do it safely, or by bypassing the default drivers and using special drivers, may average users have further destroyed their partitions and lost data that they could have recovered because they insisted on doing this. As to Knoppix 6.0 and 6.0.1, I don't know their status in this regard. But given the past Knoppix track record, I would not consider these versions safe to write to NTFS without giving a lot more time for the jury to come back om that. If anyone is considering the above advice to write to a NTFS partition, even to just make it "no longer in use", you have been warned. In general there are better ways to recover data from NTFS drives that are safe and don't risk further corruption of the data. Once needed data has been recovered, that NTFS partition should be deleted and Windows used to recreate it, perhaps as part of a windows reinstall; or just replace the partition with a FAT partition which Linux can write to safely, or even reinstall a version of Linux intended for hard disk install (such as Debian and certainly not Knoppix) and stop fighting with Windows.

[rahmuss]

So my one-year old turned off the power to my in-laws Windows XP machine while I had the system configuration utility up. Now it won't even boot up. I created a DOS boot CD; but once in DOS it's not even recognizing the other drives so I can't go in and make any needed changes to the corrupted file. So I created a Knoppix boot CD and I'm just wondering what it will do if I force the mount of their hard drive. Would I possibly lose all the data on the NTFS partition? Would I be able to go in and open the files and make the needed changes and then get Windows to boot properly? If not, then what is my best option to recover the files before I format (NTFS again) and reinstall XP for them? Thanks.

[OErjan]

to recover files just burn hem to DVD or transfer them to another compuer via ftp, even using a fat formaed drive will work (just be aware of the 3.9Gig max size of a single file)

[rahmuss]

The problem is that I can't access the hard drive at all. The computer won't even boot up off that hard drive in Windows, and I could try to force the mount in Knoppix; but I'm worried it will kill the data. I took their hard drive over to my place and will try and access it as a slave drive on my computer; but I'd rather fix the file than have to backup all of their data. I guess my main question is whether or not forcing the mount will cause a problem or not (Knoppix 6.0.2).

[Harry Kuhman]

.... and I could try to force the mount in Knoppix; but I'm worried it will kill the data. ....
If you want to try to force something, use the mount command and the read-only option (man mount for details), it should not harm anything. But you may very well find that Linux can't mount the partition. Windows is quite capable of destroying partitions that way, I have several drives that it has done it to, even without a one year old.

Even if you can't force a mount, there is a chance that only the partition table is mucked up, not the partition itself. Gpart or testdisk may help you recover in that case, see man gpart and/or man testdisk for details.

[rahmuss]

use the mount command and the read-only option...
I saw the read-only option; but would that allow me to see what's on the partition? For some reason the way they worded it made it sound like it wouldn't actually do anything, and therefore wouldn't let me see the data.


Gpart or testdisk may help you recover in that case...
Can I use the gpart or testdisk without the drive being mounted?

[Harry Kuhman]

I saw the read-only option; but would that allow me to see what's on the partition? For some reason the way they worded it made it sound like it wouldn't actually do anything, and therefore wouldn't let me see the data.
Sure. The command is used to mount a partition. Read only is the default that Knoppix uses to avoid doing any harm.


Can I use the gpart or testdisk without the drive being mounted?
These commands operate on the drive, not the partition. Gpart in particular (the one that I suggest although it takes a bit more reading of the man page) is intended to guess a partition table when it has been lost by examining the entire disk structure. Mount generally mounts a partition, and you certainly don't need to have the partition mounted before you try to reconstruct the partition table. There would be no point in these commands if you needed to have a partition already mounted, and I would not have suggested them if that were somehow the case.

[edzillion]

As usual I went ahead like a blunderbus and did lots of things I had no idea what I was doing.
Anyway I had a problem accessing the internal drive on my laptop and was getting the same error as the OP:

Unable to mount device
Error org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure

So tried to mount it various ways and then used the command:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o force

which worked fine.

Step 2:

Tried to get the USB hard drive to be recognised so I could copy the data off the drive, so again:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb /media/sdb -o force

which worked. Copied all the information off the internal drive and then put the usb drive into my windows machine (didnt dismount). When added it recognises a usb mass storage device but doesnt appear in my computer. Also I tried remounting it in knoppix but I get the error 'NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults......'

any ideas?

[Leon J]

I too get the error

Unable to mount device
Error org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure

but only after installing to usb flash drive. I've tried it 3 times with the same result. When I first boot from the flash drive I can access local hard drive partitions be they fat32, ntfs or ext3 and copy information into my newly created persistant storage space (the knoppix data file). When I reboot I can't. At first I thought since I had installed some software with the synaptic package manager that I had broken something. But it happens even if I just reboot and do nothing except move some files.

Using the pen drive in the machine I installed it with I can access the local hard drive. It is on another machine I can't. suppose rebuilding fstab will work.

Any ideas?? cheers

[OErjan]

edzillion;
if you remove a USB disk without unmountuing it it will likely be DEAD as filesystems go, the unmountin makes a final write of all data and a brief "sanity" check among other things before powering the drive down.
if you just remove the disk both Linux and windows will see a bad drive.

Leon J;
as far as it not working in some machines, sadly some motherboards are not 100% compliant to "standards" and may have problems booing from USB also some motherboards do not even have that capabilliy.
as for rebuilding fstab, it may work, but depends on HOW you installed knoppix, as a bootable knoppix or a HDD install, the HDD install is likely in need of pruning of several files in /etc/fstab to boot on another machine correctly

[edzillion]

thanks for that.

Would rebuilding fstab work for me? I presume that rebuilds the partition table etc. I booted from a knoppix live cd. Is there a tute out there showing how to do this?

ed

[Leon J]

Hi all,

I have investigated the problem. The /etc/fstab file is dynamically built at every reboot (NOT ALWAYS SEE LATER) by the script /usr/sbin/rebuildfstab which takes care to popilate the directory /media with the proper mount points (es. /media/sda1, /media/sda2, /media/hdc1 etc.).

It is the failure in populating this directory the source of your (and mine) problem. I have tried to launch the script after bootstrap in a root terminal but the script checks the current filesystems (from /proc/partitions) against the current /etc/fstab (which has been correctly populated) and refuses to re-create the mount points in /media.

I am still working on the problem since it seems that there is another task that takes care to CLEAN the /media directory at every reboot so my temptative to call rebuildfstab in my /etc/rc.local has not solved the problem since, although I am sure that the call has regenerated the content of the directory /media, there is the second cleaning task that has deleted the newly created mount points just after their creation.

I am still investigating to find out what is this son-of-a-program that cleans that directory in order to address the problem properly.

If there is someone of the KNOPPIX Team that would kindly help us he/she is welcome.

In my case the problem shows up in the version booting from an USB ket with a persistent user disk (knoppix-data.img).

Cheers

@OErjan. Many thanks for coming back to me with some help. I apologise for not providing more information. My only excuse is lack of time. But if I cannot take the time to describe the situation how can I expect help!? I am quoting mbagni above since he/she seems to be experiencing the same difficulty which I am having.

Background: I am a seasoned Puppy Linux user and have been running my machines from a flash drive with puppy very successfully. Why am I here? Discovered the 6.0.1 version of Knoppix last week and I am very impressed with its simplicity, speed and the overall look of the operating system. I don't wish to install it onto a hard drive but it seems ideal as a portable system to run from a usb flash memory stick.

I like the puppy frugal install very much and am keen to use knoppix and find out more about the way it uses a persistant user disk (knoppix-data.img) since this seems very similar to the Pup_save squashed file system created by puppy.

Puppy has the pmount program which, if I run it, has always correctly found the partitions on whatever machine I happen to be on and then allowed me to click on mount to mount them.

Knoppix on a USB stick seems to find the partitions correctly on different machines but is not able to mount them. Going back to the machine I used to set up the usb stick on the info for the mount points was still there. And I could mount them ok. But booting up on another machine is fine except the partitions on the hard drive cannot be mounted - directory doesn't exist ... error...

Otherwise knoppix on USB is working really well. Auto detection of hard ware while not perfect is very good. THe 3d effects are impressive and it is a delight to use. So hopefully someone is able to give me some help on how to get knoppix to find and use the mount points correctly?

I did notice that this is a beta version.....hope it works ok in the next. By the way - I don't get any desktop icons for the hard drive partitions when I run from a CD or from USB,

Happy to provide more info if necessary and do any testing required. I have 4 pentium 4 machines capable of booting from USB and am currently experimenting with two 4 gig Corsair flash drives. The machines are desktops with 1 or 2 gig of RAM.

Thanks for the help. I am looking forwarding to using knoppix more in this new version.

[Leon J]

Well, found a solution to my usb install not recognising the partitions on my hard drives. I have deleted the persistant storage file! All partitions are accessable. Sound works again too!

[fedemos]

for problem mount the hard drive / version booting from an USB (knoppix-data.img) knoppix 6.0.1

I suggest you make a patch

1 Create a new file and put the name patch.sh in /home/knoppix/patch.sh
2 Paste the following script in the file:
#!/bin/bash
sudo mkdir /media/sda1
sudo ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppi x
3 Save and Close the file
4 Give the file execution permission (secondary button, properties)
5 for lxde: create the autostart folder in /home/knoppix/.config/
for kde: /home/Knoppix/.kde/autostart
6 Paste patch.sh in /home/knoppix/.config/autostart
7 to test the patch: open a console and type ./patch.sh

greetings

[marhil711]

....
The /etc/fstab file is dynamically built at every reboot (NOT ALWAYS SEE LATER) by the script /usr/sbin/rebuildfstab which takes care to popilate the directory /media with the proper mount points (es. /media/sda1, /media/sda2, /media/hdc1 etc.).

It is the failure in populating this directory the source of your (and mine) problem. I have tried to launch the script after bootstrap in a root terminal but the script checks the current filesystems (from /proc/partitions) against the current /etc/fstab (which has been correctly populated) and refuses to re-create the mount points in /media.
....

I have found out that the script will only work when using the parameters -f[orce] -v[erbose] -r[emove_old].
-v is not really necessary but I like to see the scrip do something.
This still leaves the question why doesn't it work during boot?

Markus

[cpm]

Here's what I've done:

Create an "autostart" directory in /home/knoppix/.config

Create a "fix-fstab.desktop" file in /home/knoppix/.config/autostart:


[Desktop Entry]
Name=fix-fstab
Comment=fix-fstab
Type=Application
Exec=/home/knoppix/.config/autostart/fix-fstab.sh
Terminal=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Create a "fix-fstab.sh" file in /home/knoppix/.config/autostart:


#!/bin/bash
sudo rebuildfstab -r
Make the fix-fstab.sh file executable:


$ chmod +x fix-fstab.sh

[John Hart]

I have Knoppix installed on an external USB drive. Also had it installed on a USB flash but later removed most files, but the
syslinux file is still there. As with others, my internal Windows HD is not accessable when I boot Knoppix from the
external USB HD. I tried to mount the HD, as per the instructions posted her, but to no avail.

However, I found a trick that seems to work for me. After booting from the USB drive, I then install the USB KEY that has the
syslinux file. After it is mounted, I perform an fdisk-l to see all the disk devices. Then I unmount the USB KEY and 99% of
the time the internal hard drive (Windows) is now mounted and usable. Why? I have no idea. I am a real
newbie to Linux.

As the man says, DO NOT WRITE to the NTFS disk. You will probably make is unusable in Windows.

[kxm9976]

As usual I went ahead like a blunderbus and did lots of things I had no idea what I was doing.
Anyway I had a problem accessing the internal drive on my laptop and was getting the same error as the OP:

Unable to mount device
Error org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure

So tried to mount it various ways and then used the command:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o force

which worked fine.

Step 2:

Tried to get the USB hard drive to be recognised so I could copy the data off the drive, so again:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb /media/sdb -o force

which worked. Copied all the information off the internal drive and then put the usb drive into my windows machine (didnt dismount). When added it recognises a usb mass storage device but doesnt appear in my computer. Also I tried remounting it in knoppix but I get the error 'NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults......'

any ideas?

What commend would you use before disconnecting the USB Hard drive?
thanks

[kxm9976]

As usual I went ahead like a blunderbus and did lots of things I had no idea what I was doing.
Anyway I had a problem accessing the internal drive on my laptop and was getting the same error as the OP:

Unable to mount device
Error org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure

So tried to mount it various ways and then used the command:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o force

which worked fine.

Step 2:

Tried to get the USB hard drive to be recognised so I could copy the data off the drive, so again:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb /media/sdb -o force

which worked. Copied all the information off the internal drive and then put the usb drive into my windows machine (didnt dismount). When added it recognises a usb mass storage device but doesnt appear in my computer. Also I tried remounting it in knoppix but I get the error 'NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults......'

any ideas?

Oh and where and when do you put this commands?