# Bad fstab prevents boot.



## PeterStory (May 27, 2011)

Dang.
I am trying to get a 250GB fat32 USB drive mounted at boot. I added the following to my /etc/fstab:


```
/dev/da1s1	/mnt	msdosfs	rw,large	0	3
```

Now my system doesn't boot  Which stinks, because it's offsite. What is wrong with my fstab? 

Thanks!
-Peter


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## Beastie (May 27, 2011)

PeterStory said:
			
		

> my system doesn't boot


From single user mode,
`# mount -u /`
will allow you to remount the root partition read/write. You will then be able to edit /etc/fstab (using /rescue/vi) and remove or comment off the offending entry.



			
				PeterStory said:
			
		

> What is wrong with my fstab?


Is the device already inserted and is it recognized as da1 (i.e. second USB/SCSI device)?


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## wblock@ (May 27, 2011)

Some USB devices don't come up in time to be mounted on bootup.  To allow for that, there's
/boot/loader.conf

```
kern.cam.boot_delay=10000
```

There's also the "late" option for /etc/fstab (mount(8)).


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## PeterStory (May 27, 2011)

> There's also the "late" option for /etc/fstab


Does my 'large' option exist? 
I'll definitely try the late option.



> Is the device already inserted and is it recognized as da1


Before shutting down, I made sure I could mount the drive. This worked:

```
sudo mount -t msdosfs -o large /dev/da1s1 /mnt
```

Thanks for the advice! 
I'll post an update Tuesday, assuming I can get access to the machine. 
Grrr... I'll have to lug a monitor and keyboard into the server room! :e
-Peter


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## Beastie (May 27, 2011)

PeterStory said:
			
		

> Does my 'large' option exist?


From the manual page for mount_msdosfs(8):


> Support file systems larger than 128 gigabytes at the expense of 32 bytes of kernel memory for each file on disk. This memory will not be reclaimed until the file system has been unmounted.


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## PeterStory (May 31, 2011)

*Mission Accomplished!*

Huzzah!
I started the machine in Single-User Mode, and edited my /etc/fstab to look like this:

```
/dev/da1s1		/mnt		msdosfs	rw,large,late	0	0
```
I added the 'late' option, and changed the Pass# to zero.

Thanks for all the help!
Now I can get to work on Samba!
-Peter Story


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