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External USB HD Issues--Mounting w/OpenSuSE 10.2

Hello everyone!

I've finally done it and switched completely over to Linux and am finding it's definitely been the best computer decision I've ever made.

I'm running OpenSuSE 10.2 on a Lenovo/IBM Thinkpad Z60M and *almost* everything is working perfectly. The only issues I'm having are with my external hard drive. Using the YaST2 --> Partitioner I formatted my drive (it's a 120GB Western Digital "Passport") over to the ext3 file system, with the mount-point set to /media/disk and fstab options "mountable by user" and "do not mount on system startup" selected.

Onto the issues...

When I plug in the HD I can mount it fine without any problems, and I'm able to read/write/edit without any troubles either. I don't seem to be able to unmount the drive in my 'normal' user account--I can only unmount the drive by logging into the root account and doing it from there. How can I fix this?

I've already gone in and edited the permissions for the drive so that it's readable/writable/edit-able by user: <user_name> and group: root but when I tell SuSE to "safely remove" the drive, it just sits there.

And while the drive can be removed from the root account and mounted from both root and user accounts, if I attempt to start the computer WITHOUT the drive already plugged in I get a boot error telling me the file system on /dev/sdb1 cannot be read, and then the boot process halts. What's the use of having a laptop computer if, for the system to boot, I HAVE to have the removable drive plugged in? Shouldn't it be removable? I've done all I can think of...

Within the partitioner the device is listed as such:
Device Name: /dev/sdb, Type: WDC WD12-00VE-00KWT0

The partition is listed...
Device Name: /dev/sdb1, Type: Linux Native, Mount: /media/disk

Help me out? Thanks!

I'm still fairly new to Linux (part of the reason I'm using OpenSuSE) but I'm not afraid to manually change some things if I have to!

can you post your fstab file?

hint: open up a terminal and type

Code:

cat /etc/fstab > ~/Desktop/fstab

open the file ~/Desktop/fstab with your favorite text editor, copy -> paste the contents here.

As requested...

Code:

/dev/sda2            /                    ext3      acl,user_xattr        1 1

/dev/sda3            /home                ext3      acl,user_xattr        1 2

/dev/sda1            swap                swap      defaults              0 0

proc                /proc                proc      defaults              0 0

sysfs                /sys                sysfs      noauto                0 0

debugfs              /sys/kernel/debug    debugfs    noauto                0 0

usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto                0 0

devpts              /dev/pts            devpts    mode=0620,gid=5      0 0

/dev/sdb1            /media/disk          ext3      user,noauto,acl,user_xattr 1 2

Like I said...everything works fine with the drive except for mount/unmount and startup issue.

Can anyone help me with this? Shouldn't there be a way I can tell the system to allow me (the user) to have root privileges to unmount the disk?

What I would advise is to open up a terminal, su to root and chown yourHDD to your username.

You can also open "My Computer" as a root, right click and change the permissions to user.

Hope this helps.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chief_officer

I'm not familiar with the "su to root and chown yourHDD to your username" suggestion, though I have tried the second to no avail. Clicking on the device "120G Media" in "My Computer" doesn't allow me to access/change any permissions; looks like I can't edit the device itself, only the files written to it. So...still hoping for something...anyone?

There is another solution. Select log out from your session, then "end current session". Log on as root, and then open "my computer" then right click on the device. You will be able to edit it.

Regarding the "su to root", open up a terminal, type

Code:

su

and then you will be prompted with a password. Enter your root password and you will become root. You will need this information when you are installing programs and any other single thing that you can not do as a regular user.

I suggest you to open a terminal and type

Code:

man chown

and read the man page. At the "examples" section you will see what you need ;-) [you can press q and quit the man page]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chief_officer

Code:

su

Code:

man chown

and read the man page. At the "examples" section you will see what you need ;-) [you can press q and quit the man page]

Ok, cool. I was able to use chown to change the permissions of the disk to user_name:users, but when I try to left click on the device "120G Media" in My Computer it just hangs and the status message at the bottom of the window just alternates between "looking up disk info..." and "looking up memory info..."

It's not a big deal really, since now with the terminal I can unmount it in like a second with su...but i'm just wondering why the My Computer functionality isn't there.

Also--the computer still refuses to boot properly without the external HD attached, despite the fact that I told it not to automatically mount at startup...what is causing that?

su to root and edit your /etc/fstab: remove the line

Code:

/dev/sdb1 /media/disk ext3 user,noauto,acl,user_xattr 1 2

hint:

open up a terminal, su to root and then type

Code:

cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.old

vi /etc/fstab

Using the key j come to the last line and press d twice [like double click: dd]. The last line will be deleted. Then hit Esc, type :wq and the file will be saved.

I also suggest you to learn vi editor.