[arch-general] how to mount external hdd

[Patrick Brisbin]

On 02/18/09 at 02:31pm, Denis Alessandro Altoe Falqueto wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Sergey Manucharian <sergeym at rmico.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:03:08 +0100
> > <hollunder at gmx.at> 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.
> 

agreed; just to mention, make sure your options prevent automounting or
fsck'ing else it would hang at boot if the drive's not present.

> 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.
> 

this can be entirely handled with udev.  there's a sample rule in the
udev wiki that will dynamically mkdir a mountpoint and mount it as
/media/sdX then lazily umount and rm the mountpoint if the drive is
unplugged.  i used a tweaked version of this for a while, it worked
well.

pat, aka brisbin33

> -- 
> -------------------------------------------
> Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
> -------------------------------------------
> Emo Philips  - "I was the kid next door's imaginary friend."
--- end quoted text ---

-- 
patrick brisbin