Pursuant to this thread: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...for-me-618400/

...Something strange keeps happening. The fstab changes suggested by Budword worked as desired once, but they keep reverting to what they were. Changing "noauto" to "auto" and adding "rw" was supposed to automount the partition and make sure I could write to it. I have a text file containing my to-do list set to autostart. As before, it opens an empty file; from checking the properties of its partition, I know I got the empty file because it didn't automount as it was supposed to. (Further proof of that: as soon as I mount the partition and reopen the file, I can see it.)
So I opened the fstab file again, and found that auto is back to "noauto" for the partition in question, and "rw" has disappeared. The relevant content now says:

# Dynamic entries below
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 vfat,ext3,ext2,reiserfs noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda3 /mnt/sda3 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sda4 /mnt/sda4 vfat,ext3,ext2,reiserfs noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 vfat,ext3,ext2,reiserfs noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/scd1 /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0

Sda4 was the one I've been trying to change. (I might as well set all the sdas to automount, but I don't really need to automount sdb1.) Why would it keep changing back? Certainly, I saved it after rewriting the entry for sda4. (I have been editing it as root, because it won't let me save any changes as user.)

This sound suspicisoucly like auto detection running thats resetting the file, (the comment line points out these are dynamic entries ).

Do you have kudzu or fstab-sync running?

Eh...I'm not sure. I just looked in the process table, and it doesn't say I have either of those running.

Just move the sda4 entry above the # Dynamic entries below line & then make your changes. The "Dynamic entries" are just that -- dynamic -- they are regenerated automatically at every boot, ergo their title.

AFAIK, MEPIS uses neither kudzu nor fstab-sync; but it doesn't matter what program is doing the updating, just move any static entries "out of harm's way" as described above.

BTW, out of curiosity, academic interest, I wouldn't mind hearing what MEPIS uses to do the update, if someone here knows.

Thank you, Rick! That worked. Well, what is the point of entries regenerating at boot? Is it in the event of the system finding partitions or drives that have no fstab entries yet?

I don't know for sure, but I think your guess is correct -- accommodate hardware changes. That's one of the things I remember kudzu doing in RH; & what fstab-sync is for, see: http://linux.die.net/man/8/fstab-sync