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Andrew Cholakian
Asked: 2009-05-20 09:10:52 +0800 CST

Linux partition device not being created in FS

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I recently created a disk with a single xfs partition in ubuntu 9.04. I tried plugging it back in as a USB disk using an enclosure, and it shows up as /dev/sde. Unfortunately there is no /dev/sde1. cfdisk and other tools show that the partition is there, but the actual device file is not there, which means I cannot mount it.

What could cause this behavior, and how can I fix it? I tried running cfdisk, and re-writing the partition table, which just caused cfdisk to indefinitely hang.

linux partition

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Ick. You may have to manually recreate the device. I've had to do it a few times on older kernels that didn't correctly handle HP raid cards. The key to determining if the partition sees it is if it shows up in /proc/partitions. If it doesn't show up there, the kernel has no knowledge of it. As it is seeing /dev/sde, it should populate it.

    /proc/partitions gives output like

    major minor  #blocks  name

   8     0  312571224 sda
   8     1     530113 sda1
   8     2          1 sda2
   8     3   18346230 sda3
   8     5    3148708 sda5
   8     6   46074420 sda6
   8     7  126953631 sda7
   8     8  117507379 sda8

    Which can be used with the mknod command to create an entry in /dev.

        mknod /dev/sda1 b 8 1

    That would create /dev/sda1 on my system if udev didn't pick it up. You can then mount it from there. This is a good way to determine if the device is really correctly set up, or if there is a problem with the media in some way.

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