Fixing bad mount points for externally connected disks

Question

Fixing bad mount points for externally connected disks

I've got a multi-partitioned disk attached (via firewire) to my server. Every now and then one or more of the disk mount points gets messed up. For example the disk mounts:
/Volumes/d1
/Volumes/d2
/Volumes/d3

at the moment
/volumes/d2 is invalid and there is a /Volumes/d2 1

would not be a problem but these are where rsynch and backup scripts write to. This is a remote headless system so ejecting and restarting the external disk is not a possibility. At the extreme I could restart the server but I'm looking for any other options to bet the disks back to their default mount points.

x server g5, Mac OS X (10.3.x)

Posted on Apr 8, 2010 4:20 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 8, 2010 5:47 AM in response to Stephen Thomas2

Hi

Would the external drive be a LaCie branded one? If it is this sounds like the well known PSU problems associated with most LaCie externally attached Firewire drives. It's not always the PSU but generally it is. Try it with another one (if you have one) as see if the problem disappears.

HTH?

Tony

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Answer 2

Apr 9, 2010 5:19 AM in response to Antonio Rocco

No it is lot LaCie.
I believe that this drive is not yet connected to the UPS (it was on my list last time I was working on the server but I think I forgot). I've seen this issue twice with power drops of less than a few seconds.

With diskutil command line can I "eject" all volumes of the drive and re-mount?

How can I get rid of the reference to the old mount point?
If I do 'ls' I see the /Volumes/d2 and /Volumes/d2 1 but when I use 'ls -laF' I only see the 'd2 1' entry.

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Answer 3

OB_Taz

Level 1

0 points

Apr 21, 2010 12:21 PM in response to Stephen Thomas2

unmount them all, delete the ds 1 mount point and anything it contains and then remount. usually mounts like that get created when for some reason the mount is unmounted or file share service is turned on but the disk is unmounted or otherwise unaccessible. OSX attempts to service the request and rebuilds the mount point. you then reattach the disk and there is already an existing mount point so it increments the number and sticks it there

taz

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