Formatting external HDD - what mount point?

onebuck · 08-14-2008, 09:38 AM

Hi,

Most systems have '/mnt' & '/media'. I use the '/mnt' to support my system admin as the base mount point. Within '/mnt' I usually create;

Code:

cdrom/  floppy/  memory/  sda11/  winxp/
cdr/  dvd/    hd/      sda/     tmp/    zip/ usb/ flash1/ 
flash2/ hdda/ hddb/ hddc/ hddd/ sdb/ sdbc/ sdbd/

The '/media' is left for 'hal'. So most of my work while admin root will be on '/mnt' via cli.

farslayer · 08-14-2008, 09:55 PM

If you create the entry for the partition in /etc/fstab it should automount unless you tell it otherwise through options in the fstab entry.

Your practical question can all be answered by reading the man pages for the commands..

man fstab

Quote:

The fourth field, (fs_mntops), describes the mount options associated with the filesystem.

It is formatted as a comma separated list of options. It contains at least the type of mount plus any additional options appropriate to the filesystem type. For documentation on the available options for non-nfs file systems, see mount(8). For documentation on all nfs-specific options have a look at nfs(5). Common for all types of file system are the options ''noauto'' (do not mount when "mount -a" is given, e.g., at boot time), ''user'' (allow a user to mount), ''owner'' (allow device owner to mount), ''pamconsole'' (allow a user at the console to mount), and ''comment'' (e.g., for use by fstab-maintaining programs). The ''owner'', ''pamconsole'' and ''comment'' options are Linux-specific. For more details, see mount(8).

man mount

Quote:

The file /etc/fstab (see fstab(5)), may contain lines describing what devices are usually mounted where, using which options. This file is used in three ways:

(i) The command

mount -a [-t type] [-O optlist]

(usually given in a bootscript) causes all file systems mentioned in fstab (of the proper type and/or having or not having the proper options) to be mounted as indicated, except for those whose line contains the noauto keyword. Adding the -F option will make mount fork, so that the filesystems are mounted simultaneously.

(ii) When mounting a file system mentioned in fstab, it suffices to give only the device, or only the mount point.

(iii) Normally, only the superuser can mount file systems. However, when fstab contains the user option on a line, anybody can mount the corresponding system.

Thus, given a line

/dev/cdrom /cd iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide

any user can mount the iso9660 file system found on his CDROM using the command

mount /dev/cdrom

or

mount /cd

For more details, see fstab(5). Only the user that mounted a filesystem can unmount it again. If any user should be able to unmount, then use users instead of user in the fstab line. The owner option is similar to the user option, with the restriction that the user must be the owner of the special file. This may be useful e.g. for /dev/fd if a login script makes the console user owner of this device. The group option is similar, with the restriction that the user must be member of the group of the special file.