I did some looking into Audiofile Linux.

It appears to me as this is a project that has changed a lot over time. Version 2.1 is based on Mint linux. There are much newer releases, up to version 5, based on Arch linux.

Some things you need to understand. Custom distros often have a lot of tools removed, or altered, by the distro maker. The things that are removed are seen as not necessary, well until you try to do things like add an external drive, with data copied to it from a differnet system.

Just how old version 2.1 is, I have not found yet. I also saw a release based on Debain. So, lots of mysteries.

I realize you may not be interested in how linux works, so, there are some things I would recommend. Consider finding you from the user that copied the data, what version of Audiofile they used. This is sounding like the problems are based on much different distros, different file systems and who knows what else.

Don't give up, lets find out and fix it. I feel your frustration. We all have felt it from time to time.

The hard drive in question was cloned from the music drive on the machine using APL3, so yes based on Arch not Mint. Both drives contain only the music, ie nothing of the operating system (as far as I understand it) If you think that is the issue then I will presumably have to format the drive that I am trying to mount, and then try mounting it, and then copy all the music onto it again. Is that right?

Version 2.1 of APL is seven years old. I did try to get APL3 installed but it wouldn't run (probably due to the age of the computer) so I reinstalled v2.1 that had worked fine since it was installed in 2013.

I must also mention (again) that the music drive will mount, and play the music OK. So is there an issue with it being cloned from the other machine?

I would not format the drive yet. It may be needed eventually, but there are other possibilities.

I have seen threads where mounting at boot time was failing. The solution was to put a delay in the boot process, to allow the external drive to spin up. So, some more questions.

The external drive, is it a hard drive, what I call spinning rust? Im guessing yes here.

How is it connected to your system, usb2 or usb3 ? USB2 us much slower than USB3.

Do you know if your version, 2.1 uses systemd? This is an area I have little knowledge of. I avoid it like a plague.
I will see if I can find that out online.

We are here because the advise you received earlier is correct as far as I know, and the drive will not mount at boot time.

The drive that I am trying to mount is an internal SATA (a 'spinner').

Surely the drive will not mount because fstab won't modify. I think if I could get the edited version to save, that would solve the problem.

How would I find out if it is a systemd? I think that I may have seen some folders with a .d suffix, but I will need to check.

I don't know if this is at all relevant but I noticed when I mounted the drive manually this afternoon (I needed a break, and listened to some music) that it was mounted into /media.

For now, lets not worry if you have systemd or not. I asked the question, because if we need to put a delay in the boot process, that would involve systemd.

If you can not modify /etc/fstab; we need to find out why. So, for now, have a look at the permissions on the /etc directory, and on the fstab file. This is fairly easy to do. Here is what I see on my system, I can become root user and modify any file I choose.

There are two commands here, the first one; ls -ld /etc shows root has read, write, and execute permission. Group has read and execute ( no write access ) and other is the same as group.

The 'ls -l /etc/fstab' shows root can read and write the file, and group and other are read only. So, root has permission to change fstab. This is a normal setup.

If you can open a terminal, as your regular user, run the two commands, copy and paste the results here. There are ways of modifying the permissions if they are preventing you from updating fstab.

Thanks Cliff. I'm just off to bed but will look at the permissions on my machine tomorrow morning and report back.

ls -ld/etc didn't work for me - I got the message 'Invalid option --'/'

I used CD /etc, and was then able to list the contents, and found that the permissions for fstab are -rw-r--r--

ls -ld<space>/etc
that won't work without that space

Thanks Pan64, I will try again.

Some progress! Using gksudo gedit fstab I was able to modify the fstab file to look the following:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=42007db2-50af-46ae-9f4c-8b87b87c893f / ext4 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 1

# /dev/sdb
UUID=3b754aac-49bb-46fd-b3fc-e253449a1f62 /mnt/music ext4 0 0


I rebooted,and then checked fstab again to make sure that the changes had been saved.

I then made a folder inside mnt using first su, then mkdir /mnt/music I then used the file manager to check that it was in mnt

I then rebooted, but could not access the drive with the music on. Moreover, when I went to manually mount the drive, it was no longer shown in 'Computer'.

I think that I have made some progress, and hope that somebody can spot what is currently wrong.

1. you do not need to reboot.
2. use mount -a to check if /etc/fstab is ok.
3. but you need first create that /mnt/music and after mount /dev/sdb (that will not work in reverse order)
4. use the command mount (without any arguments) to see what is mounted. You can check /dev/sdb (or /mnt/music)
5. without mount you will use the local /mnt/music directory, which will be hidden (including its content) if the mount was successful
6. I think Computer will not show it, you just will use it as a regular directory, but actually that will be the new /dev/sdb

I have already created /mnt/music, and it shows up in the file manager. So, I type 'mount -a' in the terminal and then '/dev/sdb' on the next line? Or do you mean after the mount command add the /dev/sdb, ie 'mount -a /dev/sdb'?

see man mount about usage.
during boot a mount -a is executed, you do not need to do it after a successful boot (but if you modified /etc/fstab).

I still see an error. The drive is sdb, in this case, however, it has to have at least one partiton. You mount partitions, not the whole drive. When there is only one partition, you have the whole drive mounted.

So, if you try a manual mount command, you would use the command 'mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/music'. Be carful though.
Take a look at the permissions of /mnt/music directory. /mnt on any system is owned by root, unless you change it.Tp create the mount point music inside on /mnt, it will be owned by root also. This will allow user read access only. Is this what you want?

If not, you have to change the ownership of music, so the mounted partition sdb1 can be read and written to at a lter date.

It is easier to mount sdb1 inside your /home/youruser directory with a mount point your user id creates it with. That may sound complicated, however, it is simple. Just use the mkdir command when logged into your system, run the command mkdir somedirmountpoint and use that empty dir as your mount point. somedirmountpoint can be any string you want. I would suggest something like sdb1 would make sense to you.

One more comment, when you enter any command, spaces matter, they are separators so the command interpreter can understand what you are entering.

Unfortunately that is false. You can put a filesystem onto any device without partitions. In that case you will have one single partition (containing the whole drive), one filesystem. Usually pendrives were used like this, but in general it is possible - if you don't want to make partitions (do not want to split the drive).

Otherwise you may have right, that can be /dev/sdb1. During the execution of the mount command it will be clear immediately, because mount will fail if no filesystem found on the given partition.