Interesting "feature" using external USB drives with Ubuntu

This morning, I raised my first ever bug report for Ubuntu on the excellent Launchpad site: -

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mountall/+bug/614668

as follows: -

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I have the following entry in /etc/fstab: -

/dev/sdb2               /home/hayd/lenovo               hfsplus rw,auto,exec,user

relating to an external USB drive.

During boot-up of the previous 2.6.32-23-generic-pae kernel, I am prompted with the following message: -

The disk drive for /home/hayd/lenovo is not ready yet or not present
Continue to wait; or press S to skip mounting or M for manual recovery

which is precisely as one would expect.

However, following a recent upgrade to 2.6.32-24-generic-pae, this message is no longer displayed; instead, I am presented with a completely blank screen.

Having used the GRUB2 menu ( via the [Shift] key ) to boot back to the -23 kernel, I realised: -

(a) what the problem is

(b) how to overcome it - by pressing the [S] key to skip the auto-mount.

Therefore, I'm now able to boot -24 and get past the exception, by hitting [S], but the message should be displayed in clear text.

It's my view that this is a bug introduced by the kernel update.

Hardware

Lenovo Thinkpad W500 ( 4061-BL5 )
AMD/ATI Radeo graphics ( via i915 open-source driver )
Gnome 2.30.02

OS

Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS

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Will be interested to see whether (a) I can reproduce this on other hardware and (b) whether others have the same problem.