blkid not working

[kingerthethird]

I'm trying to setup my fstab using UUIDs (I'm having a problem where they don't mount by dev/sd[abc] correctly)

I tried the command :
$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid

and that listed two of my drives, but not the third, so I tried blkid (Which, if I'm reading the man page properly, should list all devices if given no arguments). This is the output:
:~$ blkid
:~$

Can anyone help with why blkid might not be working?

[Rog131]

Re: blkid not working

Try with the sudo:

sudo blkid

Earlier > About blkid

[kingerthethird]

Re: blkid not working

Ahh, I had tried searching but hadn't gone back that far.

From what I had read, I thought blkid should work without sudo, but I'll give that a shot when I get home.

[oshunluvr]

Re: blkid not working

Different distros set different permissions for some files, like blkid. Check yours via ls -la /sbin/blkid
and if it's not -rwxr-xr-x root root, change it with sudo chmod a+x /sbin/blkid

[dibl]

Re: blkid not working

Also you might try (with "sudo") deleting the /etc/blkid.tab file, which is the immediate source for the blkid command output. Then reboot your system and a new /etc/blkid.tab file should be dynamically built. If you're still getting nothing from the blkid command, try this:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libblkid1

Then try your command again.

[kingerthethird]

Re: blkid not working

mmm kay. blkid worked with sudo, but it has spawned another question. Here is the output:

:~$ sudo blkid /dev/sdc1
/dev/sdc1: LABEL="750" TYPE="vfat" 
:~$

I was trying to get the UUID of the drive so I could set it up in fstab, but this particular drive appears not to have one. I originally thought vfats might just not get them, being older formats, but I saw on some other forums that they can. Can anyone think of a reason this one might be missing it's UUID? Is there a (SAFE) way to generate/assign one?

[dibl]

Re: blkid not working

There must be more to this story. Let's have a look at the following outputs:

sudo lsb_release -a

sudo fdisk -lu

sudo ls /dev/disk/by-uuid

sudo blkid

[oshunluvr]

Re: blkid not working

sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list

[dibl]

Re: blkid not working

sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list

@oshunluvr -- nice one!

[kingerthethird]

Re: blkid not working

oh good, it's not just me then

:~$ sudo lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:  Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS
Release:    10.04
Codename:    lucid

:~$ sudo fdisk -lu
Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa6b3a6b3

  Device Boot   Start     End   Blocks  Id System
/dev/sda1       63  31487399  15743668+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2  *  31487400  488392064  228452332+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xacc54906

  Device Boot   Start     End   Blocks  Id System
/dev/sdb1      2048 1953521663  976759808  7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd597b354

  Device Boot   Start     End   Blocks  Id System
/dev/sdc1       63 1465144064  732572001  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

:~$ sudo ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2010-12-02 20:04 0832303C323030D4 -> ../../sdb1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2010-12-02 20:04 211f9eb4-a152-4486-92fc-982e33904c2c -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2010-12-02 20:04 f7faf4a4-4695-4b62-af3e-55808428757e -> ../../sda2

:~$ sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list
device                       fs_type     label      mount point                       UUID
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1                      swap               <swap>                          211f9eb4-a152-4486-92fc-982e33904c2c
/dev/sda2                      ext4               /                            f7faf4a4-4695-4b62-af3e-55808428757e
/dev/sdb1                      ntfs      1tb       /mnt/1tb                         0832303C323030D4
/dev/sdc1                      vfat      750       /mnt/750g                        
:~$

[dibl]

Re: blkid not working

I suspect you're exceeding the limits of the FAT32 filesystem, in terms of cluster size/total filesystem size.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463

[oshunluvr]

Re: blkid not working

I love nice formatting! 8)

[kingerthethird]

Re: blkid not working

I suspect you're exceeding the limits of the FAT32 filesystem, in terms of cluster size/total filesystem size.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463

Probably, I was never one to listen when M$ told me what I could and couldn't do on a computer.

So if I backup the drive and format it to something from this decade, it should get a UUID?

[dibl]

Re: blkid not working

So if I backup the drive and format it to something from this decade, it should get a UUID?

Yes, indeed it will.

If there is some obscure but overwhelming reason why you need FAT32, you could partition it into smaller partitions, and use FAT32 on them. But I can't imagine why that would be necessary. If it needs to be shared with Windows, use NTFS. If not, use ext4.

[Detonate]

Re: blkid not working

Another educational thread