USB drive mount double mount issue

pazzport · 10-09-2005, 12:55 AM

I'm running Ubuntu 5.1 (Breezy) with KDE and trying to mount a 200 GB USB external drive. The drive seems to mount twice, once as /dev/sdb which doesn't work and then as /dev/sdb1 which does work. Two icons appears on my KDE desktop. I'm kinda new and would appreciate the help. Thanks.

My fstab is:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

My mtab is:

/dev/hda1 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
tmpfs /lib/modules/2.6.12-9-386/volatile tmpfs rw 0 0
tmpfs /dev tmpfs rw,size=10M,mode=0755 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 ntfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=077,iocharset=utf8 0 0

zhangmaike · 10-09-2005, 02:15 AM

/dev/sdb and /dev/sdb1 are devices, not mount points, although they can themselves be mounted.

/dev/sdb is the second detected SCSI drive, /dev/sdb1 is the first partition on the second detected SCSI drive (/dev/sdb2 would be the second partition, and so on).

The reason you can't mount /dev/sdb is that it is not a partition - it is your entire drive, partition table and all.

You probably have some sort of auto-mounter enabled, which would explain why you can see files when you click on /dev/sdb1 without having to type:

Code:

mount /dev/sdb1 /some/mount/point

in a terminal. According to your mtab, the mount point chosen by your auto-mounter is /media/sdb1, which would be a directory and not a device.

pazzport · 10-10-2005, 03:26 PM

OK - well then the question becomes, How do I get my automounter to quit trying to mount the device? Any ideas?

zhangmaike · 10-10-2005, 08:28 PM

The appearance of icons is probably just the devices being detected, not the devices being mounted... I would guess that they are not mounted until you try to view them (which would be when the auto-mounter kicks in)

If you wish to disable your auto-mounter, that would be somewhere in the Ubuntu documentation, though I do not know off-hand, as I do not use Ubuntu.

As it is, it doesn't seem to be doing any harm, but if the icons are truly annoying you, check the documentation for how to disable the auto-mounter... it may not even be the auto-mounter that causes the icons to display.