How to have extra HDD's automount

[Bongo5HH]

OK so yesterday I was able to just click on a drive and enter it.. today I have to enter my password. This wouldn't be such a big deal except I use things like FireFTP OFTEN. Right now I can't use it with my other drives which is not all that great.

Anyone know how I can get these drives to simply mount at boot and be completely accessible?

Thanks,
Kev

[flarson]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

Put them is /etc/fstab with mount points that are accessible to the user you want to have access. The exact entry will depend on your filesystems and where you want them. All mount points must exist or you will not be able to mount on them.

ext3 example
/dev/sda3 /home/username/Music ext3 defaults 0 0

Windows example
/dev/sda1 /home/username/Windows NTFS defaults, uid=username,gid=username

Others are available including smbfs.

[Oceanwatcher]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

This would be the perfect opportunity to add a small thing to the dialogue box that comes up and ask for a password.

"Would you like this drive to mount automatically everytime you log in?"

Answer Yes and the thing should be taken care of automagically.

[dibl]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

If the "extra HDDs" are USB drives, you probably do NOT want to set them up in /etc/fstab, unless they are to be permanently connected. But if they are internal IDE or SATA drives, then mounting in /etc/fstab is the correct method.

[flarson]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

You are right dibl, although I have to say the automount setup in 4.2 is not to my liking, and I may revert to putting usb drives in fstab using the noauto,user options. I really liked the way 3.5 handled usb drives.

[Bongo5HH]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

This would be the perfect opportunity to add a small thing to the dialogue box that comes up and ask for a password.

"Would you like this drive to mount automatically everytime you log in?"

Answer Yes and the thing should be taken care of automagically.

Yes that would be great.

[Bongo5HH]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

I don't really know why one would NOT want a hdd (even a USB drive) to auto mount... and in whatever rare occasion that would be helpful - wouldn't it make more sense to have that be the thing the user had to set up?

This adding drives to FSTAB was a pain when I first started using Kubuntu... now several years later it just seems like poor thinking. Why make a user jump through hoops to access his own system? It's the rare user who's going to want to keep his drives not mounted.. and he's probably going to know how to do it....

Kev

[flarson]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

Interesting questions and there are answers for them. The fstab has been the unix mounting system for years and linux is a Unix workalike. Dual booting is rather new, and has mostly been done until recently by us geeky types that like to have control. Now there is an effort to make Linux acceptable to a less proficient set of users. That is why Ubuntu exists. It is built on a rock solid distribution, Debian, that is built and maintained entirely by volunteers, most of whom are Unix admins and are not interested in satisfies Windows transplants. Windows mounts are rather rare and we all know how to mount them if we need to.

Until recently the NTFS support was not good enough to allow write access by default.

Actually if you have a USB drive and it is mounted be default when you boot, you then have to unmount it before you remove it. Some user can not be trusted to do this and will corrupt their filesystem by accident.

[Porksome]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

There are some valid observations here and the fstab system may not be perfect but there are scenarios where you may not want drives to be automounted.

eg I have a multiboot system with Vista/Stable Linux OS and several testing linux installations. Whilst I am happy for my stable OS to view the Vista partition I do not want my test partitions visible from my stable OS and most certainly don't want my test installations automounting my stable environments.

Most people would not even need to go near fstab as the visible partitions can be selected during the installation process via a GUI.

It could also be argued that somebody who is able to take apart a PC and install a new internal hard drive is probably able to open a text editor. Even though a GUI or automated process may be simpler, less proficient users may end up mounting drives that were not meant to be mounted and potentially causing data loss. In reality, how often would people carry out such a process (USB is different but USB automounting is readily available).

Just my opinion

[Rog131]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

It's the rare user who's going to want to keep his drives not mounted.. and he's probably going to know how to do it....

Hmm - i'm one of those. I don't automount NTFS and other linux release root partitions.

From the Gutsy (?) onwards the mounting has been easy:

Left click the partition to mount (mount will ask the password /1/)


Right click to unmount.



/1/ Settings

> not typing a password every time you sudo
> RootSudoTimeout

[Bongo5HH]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

Yes I know how to mount them.. I know how to add them to fstab...

And I guess I can see the point raised above about USB drives..

Why I can't set them to auto mount I just don't know... I reboot my computer at least three times a day... that means I have to mount my other drives three times a day.. what a hassle...

Kev

[dibl]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

Kev, if you intend to leave the USB drives plugged in all the time, then you can probably set them up in /etc/fstab, using LABEL= or UUID= method. Make mount points in /media, and then use Parted Magic or GParted to label the partitions, and then make a line in /etc/fstab that looks like this, for example:

LABEL=MUSIC /media/MUSIC ext3 noatime,user,exec 0 2

[royleith]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

I went immediately to the fstab solution to automount HDD partitions, but, no matter what I did to permissions and the like, they stubbornly remained read-only. I liked the KDE 3 system setting whereby you could choose to automount partitions to the mountpoint of your choice and with the permissions of your choosing. I think whatever is managing the mounting of drives under KDE4 is rewriting the fstab file in the same way that KNetworkManager rewrites the networking files even when you don't want it to.

It looks like KDE4 no longer permits many manual changes to the /etc files.

Regards
Roy Leith

[Qqmike]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

Good discussion. Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks about these things w/9.04.
I don't think automounting is so important as is simply being able to SEE the darned drives in some convenient Storage Media listing in plain old sdxn terms. Seems that Konqueror has been pushed aside in 9.04. In Dolphin (which I don't use), you get some nonsensical listing and must manually set Labels. The Label I want is simply the sdxn designation as seen by the installer and fdisk. Given that, it's just a right-click and Mount. I'm thinking of half a dozen distros where this is not a problem. Given how dual booting has become so commonplace, a user * must * be able to clearly see all his partitions at all times. Other issues are rendered moot (right-click > Mount or whatever you wish to do with the partition).

[flarson]

Re: How to have extra HDD's automount

I have ended up adding my USB drives to fstab as show here.
/dev/disk/by-uuid/18D2-14D3 /home/flarson/gizmo1 vfat user,defaults
/dev/disk/by-uuid/27E3-463F /home/flarson/gizmo2 vfat user,defaults
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-USB_2.0_Flash_Disk_2443035390b45b-0:0 /home/flarson/16G vfat user,defaults

This way the same drive gets mounted in the same convenient place and I have created mount.desktop
cat mounthere.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin,inode/directory
Actions=mountHere;
X-KDE-AuthorizeAction=shell_access

[Desktop Action mountHere]
Name=Mount
Icon=/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/devices/usbpendrive_mount.png
Exec=mount %f
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=desktop_kdebase

and unmount.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin,inode/directory
Actions=unmountHere;
X-KDE-AuthorizeAction=shell_access

[Desktop Action unmountHere]
Name=Unmount
Icon=/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/devices/usbpendrive_unmount.png
Exec=umount %f
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=desktop_kdebase

so that I can right click and mount or unmount any directory that is a mountpoint in fstab.
This lets me use Quick Access to mount or unmount what I want, through a name of my choice. It does take a little setting up though and no GUI will do it for you.