Hey,

I remember that I used to have my fstab filled with devices. As all of you probably know, if you connect, for example, an usb device, it will be /dev/sda. However, my /dev/sda is supposed to be another device that I added to /etc/fstab to mount on a specific directory.

What happens is that I would like to know if there is a way to recognize removable hard disks by ID or something, I remember that there was a way to do it but I just couldn't figure it out.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Fill

hi

ignoring your usb device.....However, my /dev/sda is SUPPOSED to be another device that I added to /etc/fstab to mount on a specific directory.....sounds like something is not working without usb device or am I mis-reading you?

2) you are probably interested in creating an udev rule?

You're miss-reading me.

Imagine that I have a usb-disk which uses ntfs-3g on Linux and it's /dev/sda. I create an entry in /etc/fstab with /dev/sda1 saying to mount my disk using ntfs-3g filesystem, and then I indicate the mount point.

However, I disconnect the disk and then I plug my usb-pen disk. What happens is that my pen disk will be /dev/sda (because there are no other usb devices plugged), and when I type 'mount /dev/sda', it will try to mount the pen using ntfs-3g, which is totally wrong - the pen uses FAT filesystem.

So my question is how would I recognize the NTFS usb disk by product ID or something instead of /dev/sda1...

Have a look into /dev/disk/by-id/.

you do not try to mount /dev/sda or sdb it has to be a partition

and the whole purpose of udev rules is so each device is mounted on its own mount point.

so whether you insert disk one or two...or both....the udev rules take them to different mount points.

As aus9 says, buy writing a udev rule.

This link may be a little old, but it's the reference that I first used.

http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html

Cheers,

Evo2.

udev rules rule!

Check it out - it'll do what you want, because that is (partly) what it was developed for.

But you don't mention your distro (udev doesn't exist in the older ones).

My distribution is Debian Lenny, it surely has udev. I'll give it a look, thanks for your replies!

Please let us know how you progressed. Did it "work" or not ?