I am trying to mount my old hdd (new drive, fresh install of mandrake 10) so i can get the info off of it, but i can only mount and view the files as root by using
"mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdd"
but then only root can access it. I have been looking around on the fourm for this and have found a few threads but have not had any luck with it. I would like to be able to have it automount at start up.
this is my fstab

/dev/hda1 / xfs defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hda6 /home xfs defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
/dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom2 auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/mnt/hd supermount dev=/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,kudzu,codepage=850 0 0

end fstab

thanks for any help in advace.

Add to /etc/fstab:
Note that if you use a different filesystem, not Ext2, on the old disk, you should replace the third parameter with the right value.
I'd also remove the last line of your fstab (if you're not sure you need it) - it looks like a try to mount your old disk (target1/lun0/part1 is probably hdb1, but I'm not sure).

Mara,

Thank you for your help, I added that line into my fstab and it now auto mounts, but i am still unable to access it. I can only access it if i am logged in as root. Is there a way around this or do i have to do that every time i want to access the drive?

Can you enter the directory when you're non-root? If not, please copy what this command returns you:

brennan@localhost brennan]$ ls -l /mnt|grep hdd
dr-x------ 1 root root 8192 Jun 6 20:34 hdd/

You need to change the directory permissions, because now obly root can read/enter it. The command is (when you're in /mnt):
chmod a+rx hdd

This is what i get

[root@localhost brennan]# cd /mnt
[root@localhost mnt]# chmod a+rx hdd
chmod: changing permissions of `hdd': Read-only file system
[root@localhost mnt]#


I also might want to add that this is an NTFS drive.

Here's what's in my /etc/fstab:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0

You want the "ro" (read only) there. Writing to a Windows partition from Linux = trouble sooner or later.
I'd suggest unmounting the windows partition as root, running the chmod command as suggested above, then modifying fstab and rebooting.

Do as Ph0enix2003 suggests or, for console, run
umount /mnt/hdd
cd /mnt
chmod a+rx hdd
mount /mnt/hdd

i still see dr-x------ 1 root root as the file permission.

i have
in my fstab, but still i cannot access the file system as user (not root)

please advice.

Try

thnx.. it works.

by the way.. care to explain what umask=0 0 0 means?
thnx.

In fact, umask=0. Next two zeros are completely unrelated. But first umask. It's a mask on the permissions, a negative one. umask=0 means all permissions may be given. When umask is non-zero, not all permissions are possible and that's probably your case. You can see your current configuration (used for permissions of new files you create) using the command 'umask'.
It was probably not fully clear, so an example. Let's say that I've got umask set to 022. When I create a file with permissions 0666, I'll get 0644

The two zeros are: first one is used by dump, so it has probably no use for you. The second one is more interesing. It's used by fsck to get the order partitions should be checked during boot. If there's 0, the partition is not checked.