/etc/fstab entry for USB drive

Maurice Batey

I'm using a USB drive to both try out new Linux distributions
and now also for backup, but am having difficulty with the
/etc/fstab entries for the two backup partitions /dev/sda1 &
/dev/sda5.

My fstab is:
----------------------------------------------------------
/dev/hdb5 / ext3 relatime 1 1
/dev/hdb7 /home ext3 relatime 1 2
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto
umask=0022,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
/dev/cdrom2 /media/cdrom2 auto
umask=0022,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto
umask=0022,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,exec,flush 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0022,nls=utf8,ro 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/win_c2 vfat umask=0000,iocharset=utf8 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb6 swap swap defaults 0 0

/dev/sda1 /mnt/save1 ext3 relatime 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/save2 ext3 relatime 0 0
----------------------------------------------------------

The problem is that at boot time the boot info says "No such
mount point" for both of the sda partitions.

Also, in Storage Media, although the 2 partitions are listed, any
attempt to mount them (even as Root) causes "Permissions Denied".

However, if I go into MCC/Local Disks/Manage Partitions, I can
see that both mount points (/mnt/save1 & /mnt/save2) are shown,
and MCC will mount them, after which I can access the partitions.

What the devil is going on?!

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Maurice Batey

Belay that! Mysteriously, the partitions in question are now
presented already mounted in Storage Media, without any changes
to fstab...

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Doug Laidlaw

Maurice Batey wrote:

> Belay that! Mysteriously, the partitions in question are now
> presented already mounted in Storage Media, without any changes
> to fstab...
>
You will find the entries in /etc/mtab...

Doug.

Maurice Batey

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:40:07 +1100, Doug Laidlaw wrote:

> You will find the entries in /etc/mtab...

Ah, yes; thanks, Doug. All working OK now, but:

The odd thing is, if I want to unmount one of these two, I
have to use a terminal session, because if I try to do it with
Konqueror (right-click, select 'Safely Remove'), I get this
error:
----------------------------------------------------------------
"Unfortunately, the device system:/media/sda5 (/dev/sda5) named
'45G Media' and currently mounted at /media/save2 could not be
unmounted.
Unmounting failed due to the following error:
Device to unmount is not in /media/.hal-mtab so it is not mounted
by HAL"
----------------------------------------------------------------

(N.B. I had changed fstab to use "/media/sdax" rather than
"/mnt/sdax", though that produced the same 'hal' error.)

What is 'hal'? Haven't come across him before...

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