[SOLVED] F11: proper format for fstab line duplicating desired mount command

mejohnsn · 10-06-2009, 07:22 PM

What I mean is: I have got into the habit of going superuser and issuing the following command: "mount /dev/sda1 /media/WinCdrive" everytime I boot Linux on my dual boot machine.

If it responds with an error message about the Windows partition hibernating, I reissue it as, ""mount -r /dev/sda1 /media/WinCdrive", so that I at least get read-only access to my Windows partition.

But I don't want to have to do this everytime. I have, after all, finally done it enough times to memorize the proper order of arguments for 'mount'

I have done enough reading of man pages on 'mount' and 'fstab' to realize that fstab is the place to make this standard, but I have not been able to figure out the proper format for the line.

So this is my question: assuming for now that read-only access is enough for the default, what is the right format to mount /dev/sda1 as 'WinCdrive' (assuming WinCdrive already created) in /etc/fstab?

And just for fun, I would also like to know how to get this to show up in Nautilus, preferably in place of that horribly long name 'SQ004109P02' that always shows up under 'Places'.

John VV · 10-06-2009, 10:15 PM

something like this

Code:

/dev/sda1               /mnt/Windows   ntfs-3g   defaults,umask=000     0 0
--- or this ---
/dev/sda1               /mnt/Windows   ntfs-3g   defaults,umask=220     0 0
-- or --
/dev/sda1               /mnt/Windows   ntfs-3g   defaults    0 0

dev/sda1 is my MS drive
this IS assuming you have ntfs-3g installed and NOT the very very old ,read only kmod-ntfs

mejohnsn · 10-07-2009, 03:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV

something like this

Code:

/dev/sda1               /mnt/Windows   ntfs-3g   defaults,umask=000     0 0
--- or this ---
/dev/sda1               /mnt/Windows   ntfs-3g   defaults,umask=220     0 0
-- or --
/dev/sda1               /mnt/Windows   ntfs-3g   defaults    0 0

dev/sda1 is my MS drive
this IS assuming you have ntfs-3g installed and NOT the very very old ,read only kmod-ntfs

Since you say "something like" and use the non-Fedora assumption of '/mnt' for mounts, I made a slight change to the last line you suggested and did:

/dev/sda1 /media/WinCdrive ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

This fails silently. I can't even find a message in /var/log/messages referring to it. The last reference to 'ntfs-3g' in /var/log/messages was from the previous day, nothing was written to messages when I rebooted after editing fstab.

So what should I try next?

decrepit · 10-07-2009, 06:43 AM

Maybe it's not mounting at boot up.
Try --
mount /media/WinCdrive

You may need to do that as root.
This will check the fstab line, if you don't specify a device, only the destination, "mount" checks fstab for the info.
With any luck you should get some sort of error message if it doesn't mount.

mejohnsn · 10-07-2009, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by decrepit

Maybe it's not mounting at boot up.
Try --
mount /media/WinCdrive

You may need to do that as root.
This will check the fstab line, if you don't specify a device, only the destination, "mount" checks fstab for the info.
With any luck you should get some sort of error message if it doesn't mount.

I did a little more reading in the man page for 'fstab' and for 'mount'. On the basis of that reading, I decided to try changing the line in fstab to:

/dev/sda1/ /media/WinCdrive ntfs-3g defaults,ro 0 0

This does get mounted at boot time, so now there is no need for me to do "mount /media/WinCdrive" by hand.

The only drawback is that this always mounts read only, whether WinCdrive is hibernated or not. But I think I can live with this.

decrepit · 10-08-2009, 06:37 AM

Probably read only because it's at root level, you can change that by adding the "umask=000" into the line, or "users,rw" I think the ro you have means read only, whereas rw means read write.

I'm not sure about adding the extra "/" after /dev/sda1, did you have the line as you have shown? Normally there is a "tabbed" gap between the partition and where it's mounted.

mejohnsn · 10-09-2009, 01:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by decrepit

Probably read only because it's at root level, you can change that by adding the "umask=000" into the line, or "users,rw" I think the ro you have means read only, whereas rw means read write.

I'm not sure about adding the extra "/" after /dev/sda1, did you have the line as you have shown? Normally there is a "tabbed" gap between the partition and where it's mounted.

In /etc/fstab, it is as shown, '/dev/sda1/'. What 'gap' are you referring to?

I would not want to change 'ro' to 'rw' unconditionally, since that fails if the WinXP partition is hibernated -- which it often is.

decrepit · 10-10-2009, 08:41 AM

You've written this.

"/dev/sda1 /media/WinCdrive ntfs-3g defaults 0 0"

In fstab it should look like this

"/dev/sda1 [space] /media/WinCdrive [space] ntfs-3g [space] defaults [space] 0 0"

But I've just discovered that spaces don't show on these pages, so sorry, my comment is probably irrelevant