SUCCESS ................

Turns out the problem I had was that I hadn't correctly added the rootdelay argument.

What I had incorrectly done was just add 'setenv rootdelay 10' to the environment variables.  When I checked with the command that Birdman gave I could see that it hadn't been added correctly.

Just for completeness of the thread what I should have done is:

1. On boot up press a key to break into the u-boot Marvell prompt

2. Run the printenv command and take note of x_bootargs_root line.

3. Edit the root arguments:
then enter what was on the line from point 2 (after =) and add rootdelay=10 to the end of the line.

4. Run printenv again and confirm the only change is the 'rootdelay=10'.

5. Save the changes

6. Reboot

Thanks for your help cjm and Birdman.

The usb key is partitioned with one ext3 partition that fills the entire disk.  So I dont leave anything out I have attached my entire boot session below to help.

I can't help think this is just a timing/ order thing as the mount (and subsequent events will work if I repeat again at the end of the boot sequence.

Sorry for the belated delay.  I have been travelling for a few days.

Thanks cjm, unfortunately no luck.  When I finally figured out how to add the rootdelay variable to uboot I didn't see any improvement.  I assume it doesn't matter where the rootdelay message gets added and saved to?  When I ran a printenv it appeared on the 3rd last line.

BTW:  It appear that the USB is detected prior to mounting (see below) but still get the result that I displayed in my first post.

right after boot ..........

and then prior to mount command... sdc1 (Sandisk Cruzer is the disk in question)


This is really getting to me now. Any other ideas?

Thanks .......

Can someone help me out.  I am trying to run a mySQL database on a usb key but am having some problems accessing the mount on the usb early enough in the boot process.

On boot the first problem is the mount command cannot occur successfully:


Then mySQL cannot access the location:


But if I check when fully booted the mount has finally worked and I can now startup mySQL successfully.  At the moment I have done a 'quick and dirty' by just adding:
to the end of /etc/rc.local but I would like to get things happening in the correct sequence.

I have tried mounting with UUID hoping this might work before the device name is allocated but no luck.

Any suggestions for getting the usb mount to happen earlier?

Thanks........