Hi Preston, Basically, you should think of mounting a file system as placing it under some "root" in your larger file system. In this case, /dev/sdXY can be thought of as a representation of the file system you want to mount (the one on the external HD). You can place it anywhere you want, and that will be its "root" in your larger file system. Typically, people do something like /media/disk, but it really can be anything. So $ sudo mount /dev/sdXY /media/disk works, but so does $ sudo mount /dev/sdXY /monkeys/are/awesome/ provided that you had first created a directory called "awesome" inside a directory called "are" inside a directory called "monkeys" at /, your root point. As far as the "#identify" goes -- I actually think that it doesn't do anything. In BASH (the shell you are probably using), the pound sign denotes a comment, which means that everything before it and the end of the line is ignored. So $ a-random-command # lions are pretty cool too just runs "a-random-command". I think the poster put "#identify" there just so you know what you are doing -- it's not actually necessary. Hope this helps. -- Leonid Grinberg

Thanks guys. I think I got it down. The only question I have is that I think, not sure though, that the usb external hdd is on /sdb ? I ran cat /proc/partitions and it gave me a pretty good bit of results, hard to tell which one is the external hdd. Any other way to check this?

Ok, am about to try "mount /dev/sdb /media/disk . Thanks a lot for the help Leonid. Hope this works, :-).

On Wed, 2009-02-18 at 00:39 -0500, Preston C. wrote:

Got it! It was /sdc . Thanks.

You can also run "fdisk -l" as root to check your partitions.

I do not believe that this type of reply should be allowed here. There are no stupid questions when it comes to linux. Please refrain from polluting my inbox with your insulting replies. On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 10:37 AM, pyther wrote:

On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:39:46 -0500, "Preston C." wrote:

...

Got it! It was /sdc . Thanks.

Please! Please! Please, search first and if searching fails, please use the forums. I'm sick of your noob questions polluting my Inbox. The forum is the more appropriate place for such questions, but as redshift stated use a search engine first!

Cheers, ~pyther

+1 If you dont like it unsubscribe. +2

Yes, as someone else mentioned above there aren't many stupid questions when it comes, except maybe for pyther's self-rightous flaming, lol! The problem I was having got solved, thanks to the very generous and understanding people on this mailing list. Now I am trying to figure out the root of the problem, which is a lot more complex, then the intial question. I just wanted to see if I could mount the hard drive and access it as user, which I couldn't. So I copied everything from my external hdd and cp to /home/user , then ran chown. Now understand what it was doing so I can get to the root of the problem.

You can, and mount(8)¹ is very exhaustive. Assuming your HD is formatted with some kind of MS filesystem (fat/ntfs) you can tweak the mount options to set the ownership of the files.

¹ In short: man mount Will definitely look over it. I would imagine that the external hdd is formated with vfat? Not sure though. I figured out what I needed to, now time to look into the deeper problem, ;-).

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 1:37 PM, pyther wrote:

I'm sick of your noob questions polluting my Inbox.

IMHO, this reaction is a little over the top, isn't? Your point is valid, but your tone is a little too harsh to make the massage be efective. I could also claim that your rant is filling my inbox, but I don't think that is productive. -- ------------------------------------------- Denis A. Altoe Falqueto ------------------------------------------- George Burns - "I would go out with women my age, but there are no women my age."

Please! Please! Please, search first and if searching fails, please use the forums. I'm sick of your noob questions polluting my Inbox. The forum is the more appropriate place for such questions, but as redshift stated use a search engine first!

Cheers, ~pyther

I did search, the wiki and some of google, I even posted on the forum but didn't get what I was looking for- so I took it to the mailing list, where people seem to help. I could care less that you are sick of my noob questions, to be frank with you. I have gotten some very gracious replies on the mailing lists and the problem even got solved. To many people flame on the forum, it seems. I don't mean to argue with you, but when you say something about how you are sick of "noob questions polluting your inbox" then that bothers me. This is the general discussion mailing list, is it not? Sorry if this post sounded rude, but your's was far worse. Preston

On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:26:37 +0100 RedShift wrote:

Preston C. wrote:

...

I think that this is a simple question. How do I mount an external hard drive before I log into my desktop? Thanks

You have been asking all these newbie questions while these have been widely covered by The Internets. I suggest you use an Internet Search Machine like google first (http://www.google.com/). The wiki (http://wiki.archlinux.org/) and the forum (http://bbs.archlinux.org/) are a good place to start as well. But your first reflex should be to read man mount...

Glenn

An external drive can be rather reliably identified and always mounted at the same place using udev. This is somewhat problematic on arch linux tough. For some reason the devices seem not to be created before mount runs although udev runs before it. This means that external drives do not get mounted along with all the other drives specified in fstab. I personally wonder what the problem is since this method has worked on other distributions. My workaround is simply another 'mount -a' in rc.local, at this point in boottime the devices are created. Still this doesn't work reliably with one of my drives but this is a separate problem (slowness). Philipp

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Sergey Manucharian wrote:

On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:03:08 +0100 wrote:

..........

...

An external drive can be rather reliably identified and always mounted at the same place using udev.

This is somewhat problematic on arch linux tough. For some reason the devices seem not to be created before mount runs although udev runs before it. This means that external drives do not get mounted along with all the other drives specified in fstab.

I personally wonder what the problem is since this method has worked on other distributions.

My workaround is simply another 'mount -a' in rc.local, at this point in boottime the devices are created.

Still this doesn't work reliably with one of my drives but this is a separate problem (slowness).

Philipp

Folks, you are discussing how to deal with "noob questions" etc., but nobody paid attention to the more "deep" meaning of the initial question arisen by Philipp.

I confirm the problem. So, how to mount an external HDD during the system start-up?

Cheers, Sergey

If it is always connected, I would put a line on /etc/fstab so it is mounted as any other ordinary partition. If it is not always connected, I would make a script and put it in /etc/rc.d. The script would be responsible to look if the disk is attached and mount it. It would be good to use some udev rules to make a fixed symlink for the disk, so the script has a fixed target to find. -- ------------------------------------------- Denis A. Altoe Falqueto ------------------------------------------- Emo Philips - "I was the kid next door's imaginary friend."

On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:31:13 -0300 Denis Alessandro Altoe Falqueto wrote: ..............

If it is always connected, I would put a line on /etc/fstab so it is mounted as any other ordinary partition.

For some reason this does not work for me - when I restart the computer my external USB HDD never gets mounted, probably because the corresponding device does not exist at the moment when fstab stuff is being mounted. So, I'll try the udev approach. Thanks, Sergey

On Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:33:01 +0100 wrote:

On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:31:13 -0300 Denis Alessandro Altoe Falqueto wrote:

...

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Sergey Manucharian wrote:

...

On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:03:08 +0100 wrote:

..........

...

An external drive can be rather reliably identified and always mounted at the same place using udev.

This is somewhat problematic on arch linux tough. For some reason the devices seem not to be created before mount runs although udev runs before it. This means that external drives do not get mounted along with all the other drives specified in fstab.

I personally wonder what the problem is since this method has worked on other distributions.

My workaround is simply another 'mount -a' in rc.local, at this point in boottime the devices are created.

Still this doesn't work reliably with one of my drives but this is a separate problem (slowness).

Philipp

Folks, you are discussing how to deal with "noob questions" etc., but nobody paid attention to the more "deep" meaning of the initial question arisen by Philipp.

I confirm the problem. So, how to mount an external HDD during the system start-up?

Cheers, Sergey

If it is always connected, I would put a line on /etc/fstab so it is mounted as any other ordinary partition.

If it is not always connected, I would make a script and put it in /etc/rc.d. The script would be responsible to look if the disk is attached and mount it. It would be good to use some udev rules to make a fixed symlink for the disk, so the script has a fixed target to find.

I already do a combination of udev and fstab which doesn't work.

Old rules that worked on my previous system: BUS=="usb", KERNEL=="sd?1", SYSFS{idProduct}=="(somenumber)", SYMLINK+="usbdisk200"

BUS=="usb", KERNEL=="sd?1", SYSFS{serial}=="(somenumber)", SYMLINK+="usbdisk400"

New rules with newer udev syntax: BUS=="usb", ATTRS{serial}=="(somenumber)", KERNEL=="sd?1", NAME="%k", SYMLINK+="usbdisk400", GROUP="storage"

BUS=="usb", ATTRS{idProduct}=="(somenumber)", KERNEL=="sd?1", NAME="%k", SYMLINK+="usbdisk200", GROUP="storage"

fstab: /dev/usbdisk400 /media/disk400 ext3 rw,nodev,noexec,auto,noatime,async,users 0 0

/dev/usbdisk200 /media/disk200 ext3 rw,nodev,noexec,auto,noatime,async,users 0 0

What happens is that when 'mount -a' is run at boottime it says that /dev/usbdisk400 and /dev/usbdisk200 doesn't exist, consequently they don't get mounted. When rc.local with another 'mount -a' is executed it works (except that the /dev/usbdisk400 is too slow sometimes).

I'm looking forward to your ideas about what's happening.

Best regards, Philipp

I tried some more. This time I specified one of the usb harddrives by UUID. I can mount is, so it works, but at boottime this method doesn't work either. I get: special device UUID=number not found same as I got: special device /dev/usbdisk400 not found So to me this looks like udev is not the problem this time. So what is it, are usb devices not initialised yet when 'mount -a' is run? I added the usb_storage module to the modules array in rc.conf but this didn't change a thing. If I read rc.sysinit correctly the modules are loaded before 'mount -a'. Help is appreciated. Philipp

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Denis Alessandro Altoe Falqueto wrote:

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 11:05 AM, wrote:

...

On Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:33:01 +0100 wrote:

...

On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:31:13 -0300 Denis Alessandro Altoe Falqueto wrote:

...

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Sergey Manucharian wrote:

...

On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:03:08 +0100 wrote:

..........

...

An external drive can be rather reliably identified and always mounted at the same place using udev.

This is somewhat problematic on arch linux tough. For some reason the devices seem not to be created before mount runs although udev runs before it. This means that external drives do not get mounted along with all the other drives specified in fstab.

I personally wonder what the problem is since this method has worked on other distributions.

My workaround is simply another 'mount -a' in rc.local, at this point in boottime the devices are created.

Still this doesn't work reliably with one of my drives but this is a separate problem (slowness).

Philipp

Folks, you are discussing how to deal with "noob questions" etc., but nobody paid attention to the more "deep" meaning of the initial question arisen by Philipp.

I confirm the problem. So, how to mount an external HDD during the system start-up?

Cheers, Sergey

If it is always connected, I would put a line on /etc/fstab so it is mounted as any other ordinary partition.

If it is not always connected, I would make a script and put it in /etc/rc.d. The script would be responsible to look if the disk is attached and mount it. It would be good to use some udev rules to make a fixed symlink for the disk, so the script has a fixed target to find.

I already do a combination of udev and fstab which doesn't work.

Old rules that worked on my previous system: BUS=="usb", KERNEL=="sd?1", SYSFS{idProduct}=="(somenumber)", SYMLINK+="usbdisk200"

BUS=="usb", KERNEL=="sd?1", SYSFS{serial}=="(somenumber)", SYMLINK+="usbdisk400"

New rules with newer udev syntax: BUS=="usb", ATTRS{serial}=="(somenumber)", KERNEL=="sd?1", NAME="%k", SYMLINK+="usbdisk400", GROUP="storage"

BUS=="usb", ATTRS{idProduct}=="(somenumber)", KERNEL=="sd?1", NAME="%k", SYMLINK+="usbdisk200", GROUP="storage"

fstab: /dev/usbdisk400 /media/disk400 ext3 rw,nodev,noexec,auto,noatime,async,users 0 0

/dev/usbdisk200 /media/disk200 ext3 rw,nodev,noexec,auto,noatime,async,users 0 0

What happens is that when 'mount -a' is run at boottime it says that /dev/usbdisk400 and /dev/usbdisk200 doesn't exist, consequently they don't get mounted. When rc.local with another 'mount -a' is executed it works (except that the /dev/usbdisk400 is too slow sometimes).

I'm looking forward to your ideas about what's happening.

Best regards, Philipp

I tried some more. This time I specified one of the usb harddrives by UUID. I can mount is, so it works, but at boottime this method doesn't work either.

I get: special device UUID=number not found

same as I got: special device /dev/usbdisk400 not found

So to me this looks like udev is not the problem this time. So what is it, are usb devices not initialised yet when 'mount -a' is run? I added the usb_storage module to the modules array in rc.conf but this didn't change a thing. If I read rc.sysinit correctly the modules are loaded before 'mount -a'.

Help is appreciated.

Philipp

Well, I don't have an external hd, just pendrives, so to me they work fine because I insert/remove often and when the system is already running. But one aproach I would take is to make a script and put it in /etc/rc.d, so you can put it in your DAEMONS array in rc.conf. This way, i think the system will be up and running fine when the script is run and it may mount your drive correctly. You can

-- ------------------------------------------- Denis A. Altoe Falqueto ------------------------------------------- George Burns - "I would go out with women my age, but there are no women my age."

Sorry, sent before I ended the message... >_< I was saying that you could check to see if your device is plugged before mounting. I was trying to find a reliable way to do that, but I don't have the time right now. I will try to replay with something usefull as soo as I can. Hope that helps. -- ------------------------------------------- Denis A. Altoe Falqueto ------------------------------------------- Emo Philips - "I was the kid next door's imaginary friend."

On Mittwoch, 18. Februar 2009 18:22 Sergey Manucharian wrote:

I confirm the problem. So, how to mount an external HDD during the system start-up?

This is only an idea of mine but i haven't test it. Take a look in the subirs (by-id, by-label, by-path and by-uuid) of /dev/disk especially the content of by-uuid with "ls -l". If your partitions of the external HDD be there than you can put this in the rc.local to mount partition 1: [ -e /dev/disk/by-uuid/UUID_of_ext_HDD1 ] && \ mount -t YOUR_FS -o YOUR_OPTIONS \ /dev/disk/by-uuid/UUID_of_ext_HDD1 /MOUNTPOINT Not so much professional -) but perhaps an working option if udev creates the devices. Good luck, Attila