Strange(?) Mount

[divide0]

Due to a serious (and very strange) error with wine 1.14+External HDD+other unknown factors, my Kubuntu disk management went competely crazy! No internet, and half my apps would not work.

So, I had to do a complete reinstall of Kubuntu.

But now, I'm still having a bit of trouble with it. I tried to mount /dev/sda2 (my Vista partition where the majority of my files are), and when I tried to enable it, it creates this ugly folder in my home folder (<mount point>). Disk management always has the light grayed out, showing that it isn't enabled, yet it is. But, I can only access the partition by literally going to Disk Management and "enabling it" every time. I get an error message when I do this, but it seems to work anyway.

What I'm trying to get at is...
Is there a way to get rid of the ugly "<mount point>" folder (which I CANNOT delete simply by "moving to trash") and reconfigure sda2 where it will mount on startup as it should (I have it set to; it just doesn't.) What should the mount point actually be?

[Qqmike]

Re: Strange(?) Mount

Well, I'm not the expert on this at all, but usually manage in 8.04 using the Disk & Filesystems you are talking about. System Settings > Advanced tab then Administrator Mode (button at lower right, correct?).
For the mount point of the Windows partition, type (in place of <mount point> -- the box at the top of that screen -- anything you want. Also, from the drop-down list, set it so any user can do anything at any time. And Writeable.

The mount point (in place of <mount point>):
It so happens that my fstab (file system table, /etc/fstab, for auto-mounted devices) for Windows XP in sda1 is this:
/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 auto nouser,atime,noauto,rw,nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
So, the mount point would be
/media/sda1
If I run the command at Konsole
sudo fdisk -lu
I see that XP is on /dev/sda1, so that's consistent.

You can actually type anything you want for <mount point> in Disk& Filesystems, but usually for fixed, auto-mounted partitions, you want your /etc/fstab file to be consistent with whatever it is you decide to do. I could rig it all up so my XP mount point would be something like /media/WinXP (and the folder WinXP located in /media would have to be created by me or by the utility D & F, and I'd have to edit fstab as root to ensure it is consistent (and so XP will be auto-mounted)).

[dibl]

Re: Strange(?) Mount

With a mount point of some sort in your user home folder, which the user can't delete, it sounds like there's some kind of issue with the permissions -- like the mount point was made by the "sudo" user in a place where it shouldn't be, perhaps via some fiddling about in the Disks & Filesystems, or some file manager being run in "sudo" mode.

If you're coming to Linux from Windows, you have to be very cautious about the temptation to just "become root" and do as you please with the system, given your newfound "information" that the root user is able to use the computer at will, more or less like you do with a Windows system. While in "sudo" or root mode, you do not want to be doing anything in the user's home directory -- that's a proven technique to lock the user out of his login.

As Mike says, make your mount points in the /media directory -- that's what it is for.

If it is a USB drive, AFAIK you can just label it and then you don't even need a mount point -- you just right-click it (as a user) and choose "mount" and there you go. At least that's the way the USB memory sticks work -- I would assume a hard drive works similarly. It may be necessary, the first time, for the root user to put some data folders on it and give the user group read-write privileges in them, if you want to use it that way.

[divide0]

Re: Strange(?) Mount

I meant to say "Disks & Filesystems." Sorry, I posted this late at night, and I was a little tired.

I've fixed the mount point, although I cannot get rid of the <mount point> folder at the moment. Either way, thanks for the help.

And no, I've been using Kubuntu for 7 months now. Never had a problem with it until the other day when everything went crazy (although that it was still booting despite the error is nothing short of amazing.)
Either way, thanks.