# mounts fail due to /etc/blkid.tab

## frostschutz

I have an USB device with an fstab entry. Since hotpluggable devices can have a different name every time you plug them in (/dev/sdc, /dev/sdg, ...), I used e2label to label the ext2 partition on the stick, and added the following entry to my /etc/fstab:

```
LABEL=usb_drive      /mnt/usb         ext2      noauto,noatime,user   0 0
```

When plugging it in, a link to the correct device is also created:

```
~ > ls -l /dev/disk/by-label/

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-06-09 22:51 usb_drive -> ../../sdg1
```

When trying to mount the device, sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. When it fails it looks like this:

```
~ > mount /mnt/usb

mount: special device /dev/sdc1 does not exist
```

The special device /dev/sdc1 does indeed not exist, but it's not supposed to either, as the stick is not /dev/sdc1 but /dev/sdg1, and the label symlink points to the correct device.

I tried to find out where mount got the /dev/sdc1 from, and using strace and grep I found out that there exists a file /etc/blkid.tab with the following entry:

```
<device DEVNO="0x0821" TIME="1213033250" LABEL="usb_drive" UUID="1234-5678-90ab-cdef" TYPE="ext2">/dev/sdc1</device>
```

Needless to say this entry is wrong. I deleted the file /etc/blkid.tab, issued the same mount command again, and voila, it mounted the USB stick without issue whatsoever.

However sometime later, the same issue returned; /etc/blkid.tab was back, again with a wrong entry, causing the mount to fail again.

Does anyone know why this happens and what I can do about it?

EDIT:

Because the problem is annoying and the blkid.tab does not seem to serve any purpose whatsoever, I replaced the /etc/blkid.tab with a symlink that points nowhere (blkid.tab -> blkid.tab). Making it a read only file or anything was not sufficient as the file simply got replaced whenever. If anyone knows how to turn off the blkid.tab madness properly please do tell.

EDIT2:

Reported it as bug. bug 225669

----------

