Dear Forum:

Loaded RedHat 9 and wanted to access my shared vfat files, Windows dual boot. When editing the /etc/fstab file to include the following in addition to floopy, zip, and cdrom:

/dev/hda6 /mnt/data1 auto noauto,owner,kuszu 0 0
/dev/hda7 /mnt/data2 auto noauto,owner,kuszu 0 0

and then created directory entries in the /mnt directory for data1 and data2,

using the terminal root, I mount both volumes without any problems and access the data with no problems.

When I reboot my system, of course the Updating fstab occurs and then when I log back in I have lost my changes in /mnt and /etc/fstab.

How can I save the changes in fstab and /mnt so that I don't have to keep modifying each time I log in?

George Wood

Those lines in you /etc/fstab should say kudzu not kuszu that might be your problem.

Try specifying the file system type as fat by replaceing auto with vfat
-Zero

I changed them to the correct name and still the fstab file did not get saved when I rebooted.

/dev/hda6 /mnt/data1 auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/hda7 /mnt/data2 auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

George

Are you logged as root when doing /etc/fstab modification?
I also suggest you move from
/dev/hda6 /mnt/data1 auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/hda7 /mnt/data2 auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
to
/dev/hda6 /mnt/data1 auto noauto,user,kudzu 0 0
/dev/hda7 /mnt/data2 auto noauto,user,kudzu 0 0
in order can mount/unmount as ordinary user
Ciao

How are you editing /etc/fstab? Are you saving to disc after the changes are made? Does
cat /etc/fstab show the changed file?

To clarify a bit more I have installed a copy of the new RedHat version Fedora and I am trying to set up a migration plan for me and other clients to have an alternative other than windows.

After rebooting several times, it looks like the /mnt directory is fine and still has the necessary folders for the data1 and data2 mounts. The fstab still updates at startup and of course only has the cdrom, floppy, and zip, and does not include hda6 and hda7.

When I reboot and do my mounts in root terminal mode for hda6 and hda7, everything is fine and I am able to see and use the partitions.

So, I guess this is how it works. Again, I am still new at learning linux, so I guess I have to take one thing/step at a time.

Thank you for your input and help. Any reply comments are greatly appreciated.

As a side note for a newbie, what distribution do you recommend? RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc??

George

Your problem is kudzu is rewriting the lines that you edited in /etc/fstab. Get rid of the kudzu option if you make any changes of your own to a particular mount point. You can also change the filesystem type to "vfat" since it doesn't need to be set as "auto".

/dev/hda6 /mnt/data1 vfat noauto,owner 0 0
/dev/hda7 /mnt/data2 vfat noauto,owner 0 0

You might also find the "showexec=no" option useful if you don't like every file on a vfat partition being shown as executable.