USB hard drive does not mount at boot
 

Hi. I have a Maxtor USB hard drive that for some reasons does not mount at boot. The relevant line in the /etc/fstab file is

/dev/sdb1 /media/usb_hd vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0

It was working well, but I made some changes to other partitions (I did not change any partitions in the USB drive) and now it doesn't mount at boot. After boot, I type

sudo mount -a

and it does mount it. Why doesn't it do it automatically when I boot? Thanks


Augusto

Something does not look right in you /etc/fstab line, unless you misprinted it, it should probably have two zeros at the end like so:
Normally when editing or adding entries to /etc/fstab, you need to hit "Tab" on the keyboard between items instead of hitting the space bar repeatedly. This is not consistent with every Linux distributions. If the lines set up by the original installation have large gaps between items, then use "Tab", if they only have a one digit space, use the space bar.

USB hard drive does not mount at boot
 

I have an external USB hard drive and when I used Fedora 6, the hard drive would be recognized at boot time and an entry in my fstab file would mount partition /dev/sdc5 at boot time. After upgrading to Fedora 7, however, the hard drive is recognized at boot (it appears when I run lsusb) but it is not recognized as a scsi drive (no /dev/sdc is created.) After booting linux with my external USB hard drive connected, I'll unplug the drive and then plug it back in, and same thing - lsusb shows the drive but no /dev/sdc appears to mount a partition on the drive. When I boot my computer with the external USB hard drive NOT connected and then hotplug the external USB hard drive after boot, lsusb lists the drive and /dev/sdc is created and I'm able to mount the /dev/sdc5 partition. Why won't Fedora 7 create /dev/sdc5 at boot time when the drive is connected? Is the problem related to /dev/usbdevX.X_epXX? What is and how do I use the /dev/usbdevX.X_epXX that are created?

Right now I have Debian testing, Fedora 6, Fedora 7, Mandrake 10.2 & Mandriva 2007 installed. I have not been in Mandrake in a few months, but all of them have KDE only, and none of them (not sure about Mandrake), will auto mount my Maxtor external when it is plugged in and turned on, or a USB pen drive during boot up. If it is on during boot up, unmounted pen drive icons are on the desktop for the Fedoras and Mandriva representing the partitions of the drive, and it's just one click away from mounting and opening a file browser. My Debian I have to click three times to open the system icon, media, then the pen drive icon for the partition. When I plug them in and turn them on when the OS is up and running, a window pops up asking what I want to do (like MS Windows).
The only way they will be automatically mounted at boot time is when there is a line for it in /etc/fstab. But if you have a line in /etc/fstab and it is not powered on, you will get boot time errors. I believe, Mandriva gives you the option to set that up in MCC without having to manually add the line in /etc/fstab, but the same errors at boot time if they are not present.
The two things I like about F7 over FC6 is:
1: Ntfs-3g was an extra in FC6 and without a line in /etc/fstab to auto mount with ntfs-3g while it is powered up, you had to mount it manually via CLI. In F7, ntfs-3g is a core package and can be installed during installation, now I just click on the pen drive icon for the ntfs partition on the external drive on the desktop and a file browser opens showing the contents.
2: I really like the default desktop background over FC6, "major improvement".

Yeah, I agree, F6 and F7 will put icons on my desktop for hotplugged USB partitions (both external hard drive and key flash drive.) My experience, however, is that only vfat file systems will auto mount and not the ext3 partition that I want access to (but auto mounting the ext3 with desktop icons isn't the issue I have.) The real issue is I want F7 to give me access to the block device via /dev/sdX or possibly /dev/usbdevX.X_epXX. Using the icon on my desktop is not a viable solution because I want to mount /dev/sdX at /home. In other words, I have all of my home directories on my external USB hard drive that I want available at boot time.

This doesn't help at all, but I have the same problem.
But I have a WD external harddrive.
I just switched to Fedora 7 from fedora core 4.
In FC4 the external partitions automatically mounted to the locations specified in fstab.
Now I have to manually mount them (which is annoying)