[FAILED] failed to start usbmount@dev-sda.service

Gazahoo

Re: [FAILED] failed to start usbmount@dev-sda.service

So I have noticed that sometimes I get this error when I boot up my Pi 4:

It doesn't seem to have any effect on game play or general functionality, BUT when it fails the custom splash screen video I have loaded does not play. I've looked around on this website but everyone else with this error seems to have different issues than me.

Its not a big deal, but I really like my splash screen... Ha ha more of an annoyance than an issue, I guess.

Anyone have any ideas?

BuZz

@gazahoo it can be ignored. It's just that usbromservice scans through devices and SDA isn't a partition but a whole drive. You can ignore it or remove usbromservice if you don't use it

I can't see why it would be related to splash screen not working unless you have splash screen on a usb stick or something and there's another issue.

AussiePickle

I am getting the same thing.

I am using:

Raspberry Pi 4B 8GB
RetroPie 4.7.1
Official Raspberry Pi USB3 power supply
attached 4TB Western Digital "My Passport" external USB3 drive (attached to one of the two USB3 ports). Formatted exFat
Corded KB and mouse connected via the two (non-USB3) USB slots (just temporary while finalising the setup and config)
DualShock4 controllers connected via Bluetooth

I followed these instructions:

setup video splash screen: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Splashscreen/ , and
use external USB storage for roms: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive/ (although using exFat rather than FAT32...)

The above instructions means that my splashscreen vid and roms are stored on the external USB.

I suspect the issue is one (or a combination of):

The MyPassPort external drive is too slow when spinning up when the RPi turns on?
exFat causing issues for mounting?
Too many roms?

It takes 144 seconds for a boot sequence to get to the Emulation Station (ES) UI. After that everything seems to work AOK. The external drive 'activity' light blinks away the whole time, and stops as at the 144 second mark when ES UI appears.

Without the external USB drive it takes 34 seconds to boot to the ES UI.
** a subsequent retart of ES (not whole system) takes about 3 seconds.
If I boot up without the USB drive attached and wait until ES UI appears, and THEN attach the drive and restart ES (only ES, not the whole system) it takes 113 seconds to relaunch ES.

It's a bummer, as my plan was to stash this all away inside the carcass of a dead PlayStation 1 console, hooked up to the actual power button of the PS1, redirect boot text to TTY3 so not visible on TV, and use a PS1 BIOS boot video to make it look like one is using a "flashcart/everdrive" PS1 with all the games on it. It will ruin the illusion if it sits there for two and a half minutes on a black screen.

Anyway, I am considering reformatting the external USB drive as FAT32 to see if that makes a difference. I'll also dig into other ways (fstab entry perhaps) to see if there are workarounds. Will get back to you if I learn anything or come up with solution...

wmarcio

@aussiepickle Hi, try format your drive in EXT4 fs, its native Linux file system.
It is usually faster on Linux systems.

AussiePickle

I've been testing a few things and found that two things help.

A full update seemed to fix the usbmount service failing to start. (Could be coincidental. I will advise if it turns out to be bad advice)

  sudo apt update
  sudo apt full-upgrade
  sudo reboot

UPDATE : Confirmed AOK. Occasionally I see the logs fly by with a red usbmount service failure, but within 2 seconds there is a matching line stating the usbmount service is up and running. All good.

It seems that the root cause of the extensive time delay to launch ES is ES searching the roms folders to see if there have been any new roms added. https://github.com/jrassa/EmulationStation/blob/master/GAMELISTS.md indicates that once I am happy with my roms I can change how ES is launched by using the switch --gamelist-only to skip automatic searching, and only display games defined in the system's gamelist.xml. Will update shortly after I've done some testing.

UPDATE: --gamelist-only switch works perfectly. Can also be set by entering RetroPie's Main menu > Other > and enabling Parse Gamelists Only. I can now have thousands of roms on the attached USB drive and ES loads in a few seconds. :-)