[nflug] fstab usb drive question

pirrone pirrone at localnet.com
Sat Jan 28 15:25:38 EST 2006


Stephen Burke wrote:
> pirrone wrote:
>> Stephen Burke wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> I am running BLAG 30000 (fc3) on dell optiplex PII with a small hard 
>>> drive (20 GB, dual-booted with 2k - 10/10) that has two usb2 hard 
>>> dives attached to it. One is the totally enclosed variety (made by 
>>> fantom drives) - 160GB - single vfat partition. The other is the 
>>> aluminum enclosure variety (some assembly required) with a 250GB 
>>> seagate drive split into four ext3 partitions. I would like to be 
>>> able to add these drives into fstab (correctly this time) so that 
>>> all five of these partitions would mount at boot time and I would be 
>>> able to write to them and share them out and all that good stuff, 
>>> but documentation about how to master fstab seems limited indeed. 
>>> Unless I'm just looking in the wrong place.
>>>
>>> Can anyone enlighten me on either what fstab might look like here or 
>>> where to find an fstab explanation not written in martian?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> S.
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>>>
>>>
>> Stephen,
>>
>> They will show up in your system as SCSI drives, /dev/sda and 
>> /dev/sdb, with the former probably /dev/sda1 and the latter probably 
>> something like /dev/sdb1-4 so /etc/fstab would contain entries like:
>>
>> /dev/sda1    /media/usbdisk1    ext3    defaults    1 2
>> /dev/sdb1    /media/usbdisk2    ext3    defaults    1 2
>> /dev/sdb2    /media/usbdisk3    ext3    defaults    1 2
>> /dev/sdb3    /media/usbdisk4    ext3    defaults    1 2
>> /dev/sdb4    /media/usbdisk5    ext3    defaults    1 2
>>
>> In any event it will be easy enough to test using mount -t ext3 
>> /dev/sdwhatever /media/usbdiskwhatever and then drop what you 
>> discover into fstab.
>>
>> Frank
>>
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>>
> Thanks, I will try that.
>
> All the partitions mount without problems, but I'm trying to figure 
> out how not to have to do it manually every time. The device names and 
> mount points and fs columns in fstab I don't have a problem with. It's 
> that 4th column (flags?) that confuses the hell out of me. For 
> example, I have no idea what the "defaults" are. Elsewhere, I've seen 
> it suggested that it should read "noauto,users,rw,umask=0", so that's 
> what's in there now (and not working). I remember reading something 
> about those entries a long time ago that didn't make much sense to me, 
> so I'm trying to find documentation that will.
>
> Or maybe it's the 5th column that's screwed up, since I have 0 0 where 
> you have 1 2? I can't seem to recall fully what those numbers mean 
> either. Something about whether or not the fs gets checked at boot 
> time, if memory serves. But, once again, docs seem to be lacking here. 
> Perhaps I need to learn this well enough to write a new fstab doc, but 
> I need others to help me learn it. ;-)
>
> Thanks again,
> S.
>
> p.s. does the "s" in "sdx" mean scsi drive? All this time I thought it 
> meant serial drive.
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>
Stephen,

The last two fields are 1=dump when backing up and 2=fsck second after 
root filesystem.  The noauto you've been using is the problem.  It means 
just that, don't automatically mount.

Linux uses SCSI emulation for a number of devices, extreme example might 
be a Zip drive connected through the parallel port showing up as 
/dev/sda.  Same for USB drives, including Flash drives.  So the /sdx 
designation is indeed SCSI Drive x.

Frank
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