I have a problem, after I mount any of my drives (floppy, cdrom, hard drive) I cannot get a listing of the directory. I know there is something on hda1 and hda5 and the floppy and the cdrom but it will not list it. (in the case of the floppy and cdrom it will not even access the drive)
here is fstab:
# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,auto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,nooauto 0 0
#partitions found by knoppix
/dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda6 /mnt/sda6 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0
/dev/hda6 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda7 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda8 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
swapon
/dev/sda6
I run knoppix installed on my drive which makes it debian.

Did you mount them?
# Managing drives
LNAG - Accessing my drives
Rute - Device Mounting

Okay.... that worked. How do you get it to auto mount or do I have to put 'mount /mnt/<drive>' for every drive into /etc/fstab... what about the floppy and cdrom (I just tried these and it didn't work for those drives).

Change noauto to defaults for every partition you want to

What was that supposed to do? It did nothing that I could see.

If you use, for example:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 vfat defaults,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0

it will attempt to mount partitions at boot time rather than have it mounted manually, using uid and gid will set who will own the mounted partitions, since vfat doesn't have any user attributes, it will use default user root as the owner if you don't give uid/gid option. users option means that every user can mount them manually and claim that partition as their own, while the exec option gives the default executable (x) option for every file at the partition, this gives you a chance to run for example shell script from that partition directly, umask option will cause every time you create files on that partition, the file will have default attribute set, 000 means that it always create file with rwxrwxrwx permission set, but since vfat doesn't have any corresponding attribute set, this will cause the file created with the default attribute set.

hopefully this explains.

hda1, sda5, automounted with no problem.
hda5, hda6, hda7, and hda8 did not mount and when I attempted to it said 'can't find <drive> in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab'.

here is fstab now:
# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,auto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,nooauto 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0
/dev/hda6 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda7 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda8 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda6 swap swap noauto 0 0
#partitions found by knoppix
/dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda6 /mnt/sda6 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0
/dev/hda6 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda7 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda8 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda6 swap swap noauto 0 0

look at the man pages on mount and fstab. This will help you figure the format of the /etc/fstab file and what all of the options mean.

The lines of hda6, hda7 and hda8 do not have mount points. This is why you are getting errors.

/dev/hda6 <mnt_point> ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda7 <mnt_point> ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda8 <mnt_point> ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0

Change the swap line back to defaults. noauto means do not mount on boot.
/dev/sda6 swap swap defaults 0 0

Ok... first of all, I see 2 /dev/hda5 here, the first one said it has ext3 format, while the second said it is vfat, which one is true? from what I see, it is the first one which is correct.

From your fstab file, it looks like you're having 1 primary partition (vfat) and 4 logical partition (hda5 = ext3 as /, hda6 ext3, hda7 ext3, and hda8 ext3) on your first IDE drive, and 2 logical partition (sda5 ext3, sda6 swap?), on your scsi drive, while this is look very confusing at first, since your fstab file have too many duplicate lines, try changing your fstab file into:

# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,auto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,nooauto 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 vfat defaults,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/hda6 ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hda7 /mnt/hda7 ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hda8 /mnt/hda8 ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/sda6 swap swap defaults 0 0

if you're not sure about partition type, use fdisk to see it.

Michael,
Why do you want me to change /dev/hda5-8 defaults to noauto? I mean, don't we want them to mount at startup?
I'm not going to change /dev/sda6 noauto to defaults because free says that swap is working... that is unless you have a reason.
...................................................................................:confus ed: ..........................................................................................

Danny,
You are right. It did look confusing so upon your suggestion the second half that was commented out was erased.
~~~
# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,auto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,nooauto 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 vfat defaults,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/hda6 ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hda7 /mnt/hda7 ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hda8 /mnt/hda8 ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/sda6 swap swap noauto 0 0
~~~

Have you try to reboot the system to see if they're mounted at boot time?

I just tried rebooting but that wasn't the problem.

What problems are you having know?

syntax for fstab

partition mnt_point filesystem options dump fsck

dump and fsck are the numbers at the end of the line. For non linux partitions it should be both 0

Stick another 0 at the end of line for /dev/hda1

For linux partitions non system it can be a 2

/dev/hda8 /mnt/hda8 ext3 defaults 0 2

Did you create the directory for hda6,hda7 and hda8? Use console command mkdir.