Hey there all,

i have had really good luck with nfs sharing a directory in our house full of linux computers.
so i have a usb hard drive with 500MB.. cool. when i plug it in, the computer mounts it on /media/disk

now, i have tried to include /media/disk in my etc/exports file, but it still does not seem to work.

any advice here?

I would think that if you mount the drive in its own dir. it would share like any other.
make a blank dir like 500Gdrive and use it as the mount point for the drive in fstab. Then just share the dir. 500Gdrive. I would also think the media/< > would share but seems to not be doing so. Maybe because that type mount has no entry in fstab. Its just an auto mount. worth a try.

ok, did that, but the unit will not mount there.
in fstab
/dev/sdb /mass_media ext3 defaults 0, 0

started the computer, when i turned on the usb drive, still auto mounted on /media/disk

as root unmount the media/disk and re mount with
mount /dev/sdb command and fstab should give it the right mount point. You must have a matching empty dir for it to mount in. May not be able to do it auto, but once mounted right click of the dir mass_media select properties and it will show 500g drive size rather then the empty dir. and anything that might be in that dir before mounting the drive becomes hidden files. Not sure about ubuntu but would seem this should be rather standard for any OS, but might ubuntu forum for auto mount usb drive to dir with fstab and be sure its not a step missing.

This is a totally tangential question - But, doesn't a 500 GB USB external HDD require external power input?

Debian Kernel

Yes they normally do. I have three drives I use, an 80gig with two partitions and two old drives from dead PC's they have ide to usb adpters and use their own power source. With dir in home named share and mp3 the old drives are labeled share and mp3 and mount to those dir. and become completely shared even with windows in virtualbox via the file share it has.
/dev/sda /home/share ntfs defualt,nls=utf8, 0 0
/dev/sdb /home/mp3 ntfs defualt,nls=utf8, 0 0
All my shares are formated in NTFS. I leave most things turned on all the time and with out some kind of sleep the old drives get a work out. Everything is backed up so if they die and they will someday, then nothing is lost. I do this with a laptop which is more a moble desktop as its home 98% of the time, so they do need their own power anyway. Some of the large ext drive have a spin down and rest mode when not active, but I don't know which ones work in Linux or if any of them do.