Mounting 2nd drive at boot.

JONOR · #1 30th July 2010, 05:48 PM

I've got a semi-retired hdd (with a few bad sectors my disk utility tells me) formatted in ext4 that can be mounted onto the Desktop after boot provided root password is offered first.
I thought it would be straight forward to mount it at boot with something in etc/fstab like :

Code:

/dev/sdb /home/Jo/Desktop ext4

But this doesn't work, is there a glaring error here ?

Various threads suggest permission restrictions could be the cause but i have had no success with them and help would be appreciated from one of the many people who must have multiple drives.

forkbomb · #2 30th July 2010, 05:55 PM

See man fstab. fstab format is:

Code:

<device>     <mount point>     <filesystem>     <options>     <dump>  <pass>

Two other thoughts:

Why would you mount it to /home/Jo/Desktop? How much stuff do you really save to ~/Desktop? I'd mount it to something like /mnt/disk-2 or something.
/dev/sdb isn't a complete device node for a partition. Are you sure it's /dev/sdb rather than /dev/sdb1?

Assuming it's actually /dev/sdb1, try:

Code:

/dev/sdb1     /your/mount/point     ext4     defaults     0 0

What do you get when you try

Code:

su -c 'fdisk -l'

(careful with fdisk. That's fdisk space hyphen lowercase letter "l". It'll list available partitions.)

errorxp · #3 30th July 2010, 06:02 PM

You also might need to change mount point folder permissions in order to be able to have read-write access.
See chown --help

JONOR · #4 30th July 2010, 06:35 PM

Thanks Forkbomb and Errorxp, Forkbomb your first suggestion worked on the first attempt,
but i do still have a slight permissions problem with the Desktop now (hopefully to be resolved soon when chown --help has been read).
A duplicate Lost and Found folder from the hdd (there is still another one in the drive) has appeared on the Desktop that i don't have permission to delete.

forkbomb · #5 30th July 2010, 06:43 PM

lost+found is a directory created directly under the root of ext (ext3 and ext4) filesystems. It's owned by root and even if you delete it as root it will probably reappear after reboot. What's happening is that since you're mounting to ~/Desktop, that's mounting over the top of your old Desktop (you probably lost any desktop icons you had previously).

I ask again why you're mounting to Desktop. You do realize that if you go with that mount point, your stuff will only be saved to your second disk if you save it to your Desktop?

JONOR · #6 30th July 2010, 10:01 PM

Desktop was chosen simply because that is the default for the usb stick drives that are my other backup storage and keeping it all together seemed easier.
What with the unwanted duplicate Lost and Found folder i'll be likely taking up your /mnt directory suggestion for the hdd and the usbs too if possible.

forkbomb · #7 30th July 2010, 10:05 PM

USB drives aren't automounted to ~/Desktop by hal. Those are just the GNOME shortcuts for gvfs mounts that end up on your desktop. When you put in removable media and it's automounted, it's usually to a mountpoint inside /home/yourusername/.gvfs.

The desktop shortcuts are totally different from the mount point. I'd put a mountpoint underneath /mnt (don't mount something directly to /mnt -- use a subdirectory like /mnt/disk-2 or whatever) and then make a desktop shortcut or GNOME bookmark via Nautilus.

JONOR · #8 30th July 2010, 10:44 PM

Thanks for the mini tutorial Forkbomb. I'll be bookmarking/shortcutting to the 2nd hdd mounted in a subdirectory of /mnt to get my Desktop behaving again.

rockdoctor · #9 30th July 2010, 10:54 PM

I'm going to make a suggestion here - don't mount the drive by device name (/dev/sdb), but use either the volume label or uuid. System updates have been known to change the order in which available drives are recognized, and, hence, the device designation. I tend to use volume labels in /etc/fstab, as shown below:

Code:

LABEL=Rawhide    /mnt/Rawhide    ext4    defaults 0 0

but using uuids

Code:

UUID=bd6fcfb5-3696-4109-bfb0-c1ad6aeb70b1    /mnt/Rawhide    ext4    defaults 0 0

avoids the potential problem of two partitions with the same label on different drives.

errorxp · #10 31st July 2010, 12:09 PM

why don't you use
/media/somethingsomething
as your mount point? This way the partition will appear on your desktop automatically, no need to create any shortcuts.

JONOR · #11 31st July 2010, 11:49 PM

Yes /media/somethingsomething seems better still - no need to learn about shortcuts.
The drive needed a reformatting to remove various locked folders it was acquiring during the change-around.
This meant those using the uuid in the fstab needed to paste in the new uuid.