I'm having some issues trying to mount /dev/hda3 (an ext3 formatted partition) as /home at bootup. I've already moved the one user directory to hda3 and I also created the entry in fstab. The entry looks like this:

--> /dev/hda3 /home ext3 auto,defaults 0 0 <--

At bootup, /dev/hda3 doesn't even mount, as if the fstab entry is ignored.

Then I get this message right before kdm starts:

--> ls: /home/*/Desktop: No such file or directory <-----

All resulting in KDE not being able to start.

What am I doing wrong? How can I fixed this problem?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

- Delamatrix

Make sure you really copied all of the files and subdirectories too.

Try removing the "auto" from the fstab. The only place this occurs in mine is the cdrom I assume because it needs to be loaded as required i.e. when media is present.

yes I copied all directories and subdirectories and also moved the auto from the fstab entry. The problems still exists. Are there any more suggestions? Thanks.

- delamatrix

Did you reboot after editing the fstab? You have also created the /home directory on the partition?

Does /home/<user>/Desktop exist
Can you mount the partition manually?

You do not need to create /home on the hda3 filesystem because that is the mount point which is part of /

yes, I reboot everytime I change the fstab just to be on the safe side.

also, yes, I can manually mount /dev/hda3 /home. I've been booting into console and manually mounting hda3 as home, then starting KDE and everything is fine this way. But why doesn't the mount point automatically mount during bootup? The fstab entry is:

/dev/hda3 /home ext3 defaults 0 0

That should work right?

Michealk, the hda3 filesystem doens't have /home on it. It just have two user directories like this (user1,user2).

-Delamatrix

Try:

/dev/hda3 /home ext3 notail 1 2

and delete the /home directory in /,...

Have you changed the ownership of the directories to their user???

Do you see any error messages on why it isn't mounting?

I taking a guess but if this is the last line of your fstab file there needs to be an EOL character before the end of file character. Edit the file and move the cursor to the end of the line then press the enter key.

the error message I get at bootup is as follows:

fsck.ext3: Filesystem hs unsupported feature(s) (/home)

e2fsck: Get a new version of e2fsck!

fsck failded. Please repair manually.

CONTROL-D will exit from this shell and continue system startup.

I don't really think this e2fsck is really the problem, but it may be. I can't figure it out guys. Any more suggestions?

- Delamatrix

Technically the entry in fstab should work but judging by the error there is something there that fsck doesn't like. Have you tried running e2fsck on it to see if it will fix the problem?