fsck failure at boot

[Jason Dixon]

We have an Altix 350 (ia64) 2-node server running RHAS 4.  I just  
installed a fibre Qlogic HBA (QLA2310) in the controller node, which  
seemed to work fine.  I formatted one large ext3 partition (sdb1) and  
was able to mount it flawlessly.  Upon rebooting, however, the system  
hung while checking the new filesystem:

...
Checking all file systems.
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /san] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/sdb1
/dev/sdb1:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate  
superblock:
     e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

fsck.ext3: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/sdb1
[FAILED]

*** An error occurred during the file system check.
*** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot
*** when you leave the shell.
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue):
...


Fsck'g the filesystem reports it as clean, and I'm able to mount the  
partition immediately:

(Repair filesystem) 1 # fsck.ext3 /dev/sdb1
e2fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
/dev/sdb1: clean, 11/61292544 files, 1949532/122554648 blocks
(Repair filesystem) 2 # mount /san
(Repair filesystem) 3 # df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
                        74G  7.6G   63G  11% /
/dev/sdb1             461G  102M  437G   1% /san


Does anyone have any clues as to why this is happening?  If I comment  
out the relevant line in fstab, the machine boots up fine.  I can  
then manually mount the filesystem, but certainly this should not be  
necessary.

[root at altix ~]# grep san /etc/fstab
/dev/sdb1              /san                    ext3     
defaults        1 2


Thanks,

--
Jason Dixon
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net