boot stall with bad internal storage drive

[Turgid]

howdy,I have a problem booting up Mint 17.3.
In the file system I mounted two internal hard drives "storage" and "storage2".
Both identical drives with different files on them.
I unmounted "storage" and shut down.
My backplane failed on disk 3 which was "storage" during the night. Later fixed by sliding the drive in and out a few times.
On booting this morning, the boot would stall trying to find "storage"
[actually the serial number for "storage"]
It said press "S" for skip, "m" for manual
I pressed s, S, ctrl-s, ctrl-S, and a whole bunch more ,
but the pressing did nothing- even waited for a minute or so.
Stalled boot until I fixed the backplane and got the bios to see "storage"
2 questions:
#1how do I unmount a internal drive FOR SURE?
#2How do I press :s: and make that key do its job during a stalled boot?
P.S. "storage" is found in the little box on the taskbar [called removable drives]
and if I double click on the computer icon on the desktop. [file manager I guess]
Without the verbose working, I would have formatted and reinstalled Mint.

[Turgid]

This works.
While booting press and hold the left shift key. Then tap the "s" key about twice a second for about the slow count to 300
[about three minutes or until the error loop quits.]
I found out that hard drive "storage" was unmounted in the file system but not grub. Grub still searches for the unmounted drive , then tries over and over again.
I left it run for the morning and it was still in the error loop, but my fix got me in a Mint desktop.
I'll leave some more stuff as I find it.
blog

[austin.texas]

Stalled boot until I fixed the backplane and got the bios to see "storage"

This sounds like a hardware problem with the connections. Your computer is having trouble accessing the drive. Switch cables on the hard drives to see if one cable or port is bad.

#1how do I unmount a internal drive FOR SURE?

The OS unmounts everything automatically when you shut down or reboot.

You can post the result of these commands to see if there is a problem with the automounting:

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inxi -pou

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cat /etc/fstab

[Turgid]

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mal@p9x79 ~ $ inxi -pou
Partition: ID-1: / size: 168G used: 6.7G (5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
           uuid: 30c18c20-94ef-4f24-9eda-606b2cfa83e6
           ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511M used: 3.4M (1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1
           uuid: D413-714C
           ID-3: /mnt/4A90AD2090AD138B size: 373G used: 124M (1%) fs: fuseblk dev: /dev/sdb1
           uuid: 4A90AD2090AD138B
           ID-4: swap-1 size: 17.12GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
           uuid: d3434352-718f-409a-9ac4-dd9bbb0de984
Unmounted: No unmounted partitions detected
mal@p9x79 ~ $ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=30c18c20-94ef-4f24-9eda-606b2cfa83e6 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=D413-714C  /boot/efi       vfat    defaults        0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda3 during installation
UUID=d3434352-718f-409a-9ac4-dd9bbb0de984 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/EAB69F4AB69F15E3 /mnt/EAB69F4AB69F15E3 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/4A90AD2090AD138B /mnt/4A90AD2090AD138B auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0
mal@p9x79 ~ $ 

[austin.texas]

There is a problem there. The inxi command detects 4 partitions, but in fstab you are trying to mount 5 partitions.
"/dev/disk/by-uuid/EAB69F4AB69F15E3 /mnt/EAB69F4AB69F15E3 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0" does not exist, according to inxi.
As I suggested, this seems to be a hardware problem where the computer is not finding that drive when it boots.
Did you try switching cables yet?

[Turgid]

The drive EAB69F4AB69F15E3 is unmounted and removed from the computer.But it is listed as mounted.
EAB69F4AB69F15E3 is "storage".
If it is installed and mounted grub boots ok
if it is installed and unmounted grub boots ok
if it is removed from the computer after unmounting when restarted grub fails.
if it is removed from the computer when computer is shut down grub fails.

In the previous post there is a line:
/dev/disk/by-uuid/EAB69F4AB69F15E3 /mnt/EAB69F4AB69F15E3 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0

If I could remove it or put a # in front of it , then while booting it wouldnt look for "storage" and the fail.
edit 1 I put a # in front and will now try it.

edit 2 that hard drive works just fine in Win7 in that rack position.. It is rack mounted , so I slide it in and out of the computer frame.

[austin.texas]

If it boots when that drive is installed and does not boot when that drive is removed, that indicates that Grub is installed to that hard drive.
To install Grub to sda, run the commands:

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sudo update-grub

and

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sudo grub-install /dev/sda

If you want to check on how Grub is configured first, post the result of the Boot Info Script:
Install boot-info-script:

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sudo apt-get install boot-info-script

Then run the script:

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sudo bootinfoscript

Paste the results at pastebin.ubuntu.com - and copy the resulting link to the forum.

Or you can upload a text file to pastebin.com by using this command in a terminal:
pastebin /home/yourusername/Documents/filename.txt
Post the resulting URL link that displays in the terminal.

[Turgid]

Here is the result of your first two sudgestions:
mal@p9x79 ~ $ sudo update-grub
[sudo] password for mal:
Generating grub configuration file ...
Warning: Setting GRUB_TIMEOUT to a non-zero value when GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT is set is no longer supported.
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.19.0-32-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.19.0-32-generic
ERROR: sil: only 3/4 metadata areas found on /dev/sda, electing...
ERROR: sil: only 3/4 metadata areas found on /dev/sda, electing...
ERROR: sil: only 3/4 metadata areas found on /dev/sda, electing...
ERROR: sil: only 3/4 metadata areas found on /dev/sda, electing...
No volume groups found
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
done
mal@p9x79 ~ $ sudo grub-install /dev/sda
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.
mal@p9x79 ~ $

P.S. austin.texas is awesome!

[austin.texas]

P.S. austin.texas is awesome!

Well, thanks...
I hope that means that everything is corrected now.

[Turgid]

Yup, I rebooted and the desktop came up in less than a minute with no stalls or errors.

Do you still want me to upload to pastebin?

I burnt a disk called "super grub2 disk" so if this happens again I'll be able to bypass my corrupted grub.
Any ideas why my grub was corrupted?

[austin.texas]

Yup, I rebooted and the desktop came up in less than a minute with no stalls or errors.

Do you still want me to upload to pastebin?

I burnt a disk called "super grub2 disk" so if this happens again I'll be able to bypass my corrupted grub.
Any ideas why my grub was corrupted?

I just think Grub was installed to the external drive instead of sda.
SuperGrub2 is awesome. I can boot you into your installed OS even if Grub has never been installed.

[Turgid]

Take care
mal