Installed new harddisk but can't mount it?

Babe963 · 09-10-2006, 07:26 AM

Hi..

I managed to install my used 120GB maxtor drive. It has 2 partitions .. a 60Gb in NTFS and a 60 GB in FAT32 .. I am trying to mount the FAT32 partition but evertime I run mount it's asking to specifiy the file type??

Any help.. Ideas??

Here is my /etc/fstab

[HTML]# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sdb1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sdb5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom0 iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom1 iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdc1 /mnt/pretec auto noauto,user 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdd1 /mnt/card auto rw,noauto,user 0 0
/dev/hdc2 /mnt/backups auto rw,noauto,user 0 0
[/HTML]

Here is what I get

[HTML]home:/home/devil# mount /dev/hdc2 /mnt/backups
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
[/HTML]

stress_junkie · 09-10-2006, 07:48 AM

How do you know that this hard drive has these partitions? Use fdisk -l to see what Linux can detect.

Code:

$ /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 158816 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1       18725     9437368+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2           18726       20806     1048824   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3           20807      158816    69557040   83  Linux

uselpa · 09-10-2006, 09:11 AM

If you want to mount the partition as a normal user, you need to specify the file type in /etc/fstab. Your command would work as user root, though. So change

Code:

/dev/hdc2        /mnt/backups   auto    rw,noauto,user  0       0

to

Code:

/dev/hdc2        /mnt/backups   vfat    rw,noauto,user  0       0

Babe963 · 09-10-2006, 09:40 AM

Hi,,,

fdisk -l showed this:

[HTML] Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 * 1 7473 60026841 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdc2 7474 14946 60026872+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdc5 7474 14946 60026841 b W95 FAT32
[/HTML]

So I was wrong the drive is hdc5 not hdc2 !! Ooops..

Now it's working fine and cool ..

Any idea how can I have it to automount from boot ...!!

Thanx

stress_junkie · 09-10-2006, 02:53 PM

Hi again Babe963,

I would enter the following line in your /etc/fstab file to have the partition mounted during system startup.

Code:

/dev/hdc5        /mnt/backups   vfat    auto,rw   0    0

The options part of the line is open to debate. I would put "noexec,nosuid" in that part of the line as well as the "auto,rw". The "noexec" option means that program images on that disk will not run/execute. I think of this option being most helpful in terms of possibly preventing a JPEG virus from executing, though I don't know if "noexec" will actually prevent this sort of thing. The "nosuid" option means that programs that have the "suid" bit set will not assume the id of the owner of the program. This is helpful because you never know how a bit for FAT32 could be interpreted by the Linux file system driver. It's just safer to say "nosuid". So I think that I would recommend this line for /etc/fstab.

Code:

/dev/hdc5    /mnt/backups  vfat   auto,rw,noexec,nosuid   0  0

If your normal user account(s) cannot access the files due to file permissions then you could add "gid=100" to the options section of the /etc/fstab line. Note that the man page for the mount command shows that gid is a valid option for FAT file systems but is not listed as an option for FAT32 (vfat) file systems. All the same I would put it in and see what happens. The "gid=100" option would tell the Linux kernel to "see" the files on that partition as being owned by the Linux user group 100, which is "users".

Babe963 · 09-12-2006, 03:32 PM

Adding the /dev/hdc5 to /etc/fstab worked nicely thanx ...
But I changed the mounting to the following

/dev/hdc5 /media/fat vfat rw,defaults,umask=0000 0 0

Works like a charm with this ...