Automatically mounting drives with FSTAB

caesius_01 · 10-21-2003, 04:03 AM

I'm a wee bitty tired of logging in as root, mounting a CD, logging out, logging back in as a normal user then finally accessing the CD. I have heard there is a line you can add to FSTAB to mount drives on boot.

However, there is already a line down the bottom of FSTAB relating to the CD drive; I goes something like: "/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom" so forth and so forth. Shouldn't my CD drive already be mounting on startup?

Another thing is unmounting drives, if I remembered correctly BASH helpfully told me I had to be super-user to unmount drives. Is there anyway to:

a) Simplify the whole mount/unmount experience
b) Let 'normal' users mount and unmount.

P.S. No, I do not have a windowing system installed. I'm running Debian Linux.

Cheers,
Ben

arunshivanandan · 10-21-2003, 04:13 AM

my /etc/fstab

Code:

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/backup           /backup                 ext3   defaults        1 2
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
LABEL=/reccal   /reccal ext3     exec,dev,suid,rw,usrquota 1 2
LABEL=/tmp              /tmp                    ext3    defaults        1 2
LABEL=/var              /var                    ext3    defaults        1 2
/dev/sda6               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             auto    noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

here,add the cdrom entry to your fstab and then change 0 0 to 1 2(i think so)

joesbox · 10-21-2003, 04:43 AM

what i have done is allowed users to mount the cdrom and i run gkrellm on my desktop.
gkrellm is a system monitoring app that is handy if you like to see what your system is doing. it also allows you to mount/unmount drives if you want. you can get info here => www.gkrellm.net
if you don't have it on your system now use apt-get install gkrellm.
to allow users to mount/umount, where arunshivanandan has owner in his/her cdrom line, change to users.

lugoteehalt · 10-21-2003, 05:17 AM

quote 'a) Simplify the whole mount/unmount experience
b) Let 'normal' users mount and unmount.

Put 'user' or users, can't remember, or 'owner', in fstab line and the user can mount and umount with:
mount /cdrom say.
Put a symbolic link to /cdrom in your home directory:
ln -s /cdrom C
and you could u/mount with:
mount C at least on Debian.

Loose 'noauto' from fstab and it'll mount cdrom for you.

However you'll probably have to read the manual for fstab and mount - it tends not to do what you want.

dalek · 10-21-2003, 05:30 AM

Will Debian let you use supermount? It works pretty well on mine anyway.

Just curious

Still want to rant about that Mandrake 9.2.

michaelk · 10-21-2003, 07:13 AM

Adding the option user to a fstab line allows any user to mount / umount the filesystem.

The noauto option in the fstab file tells the OS not to mount at boot. Your mounting a filesystem not the drive so you will get errors at boot if your CDROM drive is empty without the noauto option.

See the man pages for mount and fstab for addition info on options.

joesbox · 10-21-2003, 11:10 AM

Quote:

quoted by michealk
Adding the option user to a fstab line allows any user to mount / umount the filesystem.

this is why i also included the info on gkrellm it has a tool that allows you to press a button and voiala (sp) the drive is mounted. you can also do this for partitions and samba mounts if you wanted to add this feature. i only use it for cdrom and floppy mounting and to report how much space is on my samba mount.