Problem with fstab

[T J Tulley]

I need to mount 3 partitions when the system boots - in previous installtions I've not had a problem, but in Felicia I have failed to ge them to boot automatically. I have tried various edits of the fstab lines - here are the current ones:

# /dev/sda1
LABEL="(E)DI8:H7R" /dev/sda1 /media/(E)DI8:H7R ntfs defaults relatime 0 2
# /dev/sdb1
LABEL=Backups /dev/sdb1 /media/Backups ntfs defaults relatime 0 2
# /dev/sdc1
LABEL=SATABkps /dev/sdc1 /media/SATABkps defaults relatime 0 2

They mount readily from a command line - I've long ago set appropriate permissions. At present I have to do that every time I re-boot, though not after Hibernate.

I shall be most grateful for relevant advice.

[proxima_centauri]

I'm not a huge expert with fstab but,
Why do you use two labels, I dont think you can do that, i.e. LABEL="(E)DI8:H7R" and /dev/sda1; use one or the other.
Also for your last entry /dev/sdc1, there is no filesystem type specified. I use ntfs-3g for NTFS partitions. Also I'm not sure, but I think relatime is a Linux filesystem option, but I could be wrong. The fstab entry for my NTFS partition is

/dev/sda1 /media/Preload ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

Also make sure that the mount point you specified exists in /media.

I'd still like to see your partitions, could you post what "sudo fdisk -l" outputs in terminal please.

[T J Tulley]

Thanks Proxima Centauri
I had to create the mount points at first, now they already exist when I re-boot, but the devices are not automatically mounted. The first one shows in "My computer", and mounts with a double-click (although I get a box saying it couldn't!). The other 2 don't show in My Computer, but mount on command.
The labels were applied in Windows, and somewhere I've seen them recommended for use in fstab. They have automatically mounted in previous Mint versions - why not in Felicia?
- here are my disks and partitions from $ sudo fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sda: 82.3 GB, 82348277760 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10011 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1e8c1e8b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 5227 41985846 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 5228 5865 5124735 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 5866 6184 2562367+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4 6185 10011 30740377+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xeaf48cfa

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 5099 40957686 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 5100 10198 40957717+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb3 10199 15297 40957717+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb4 * 15298 24321 72485280 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 15298 15934 5116671 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 15935 18611 21502971 83 Linux
/dev/sdb7 18612 18879 2152678+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb8 18880 24321 43712833+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00019f3b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 5291 42499926 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc2 5292 30518 202635877+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdc5 5292 10582 42499926 83 Linux
/dev/sdc6 10583 15873 42499926 83 Linux
/dev/sdc7 15874 21164 42499926 83 Linux
/dev/sdc8 * 21165 21801 5116671 83 Linux
/dev/sdc9 21802 22056 2048256 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc10 22057 26263 33792696 83 Linux
/dev/sdc11 26264 26871 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdc12 26872 30518 29294496 83 Linux

and here is /etc/mtab - after mounting the required partitions (the last 3 lines).

/dev/sda2 / ext2 rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0
tmpfs /lib/init/rw tmpfs rw,nosuid,mode=0755 0 0
/proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
varrun /var/run tmpfs rw,nosuid,mode=0755 0 0
varlock /var/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777 0 0
udev /dev tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw 0 0
lrm /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/volatile tmpfs rw,mode=755 0 0
/dev/sda4 /home ext3 rw,relatime 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
gvfs-fuse-daemon /home/theo/.gvfs fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon rw,nosuid,nodev,user=theo 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/(E)DI8:H7R fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sdc1 /media/SATABkps fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/Backups fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0

[proxima_centauri]

Wow.
If I were you I would try something like this first:

# /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1 /media/(E)DI8:H7R ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
# /dev/sdb1
/dev/sdb1 /media/Backups ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
# /dev/sdc1
/dev/sdc1 /media/SATABkps ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

[viking777]

Theo, your research was absolutely correct. Mounting partitions by LABEL is vastly superior to using uuid (which is not human readable) or by device address (which will change if you add or delete a new partition). The first thing you need to understand about it is that labels do not appear on their own, and I would be surprised if windows creates them. So what you need to do is to open a terminal and type:

Code: Select all

blkid

the result will give you the device address first, the label second, (if there is one) and the uuid third.

If you have a label then you can enter that label into fstab in exactly the same way that you have shown in your first post.

If there are no labels or if they are different to the ones you posted then your best bet is to specify your own. How you do that depends on what you feel most comfortable with. You could use gparted, right click on a partition (must be unmounted) and select 'label' and type what you want.

The second method is to open a terminal and run the e2label command which looks a bit like this:

Code: Select all

e2label /dev/sdb1 Backups

Which will set the label of sdb1 to 'Backups' (if it isn't already).

Of course, if you rarely/never add or delete partitions from your drive then the device address method (ie. /dev/sdb1) will work perfectly for you.

[T J Tulley]

Thanks viking777 and proxima centauri.

I believe the command e2label doesn't work with ntfs partitions - these were labelled in the Windows Disk Manager.

I had a good look at the manual for fstab and it appears that I was giving 2 names for each partition - i.e. 2 entries in one field. I have now removed the second and await my next reboot to assess the result. I've also appended -3g to ntfs though I don't think that actually matters. The mount points have the same names - it is necessary to use " " to enclose the name which uses special characters ( ) when entering it. It is then interpreted correctly.

The manual is less than clear (not unusual!) about the options to specify in the 4th field - which determines mounting. It appears that there must be a command mount -a in the boot script, but I'm not a developer and can't read the scripts.

[altair4]

I picked this up from somewhere:

You can change the labels of your filesystems using these commands:

* ext2/ext3: e2label /dev/XXX <label>
* reiserfs: reiserfstune -l <label> /dev/XXX
* jfs: jfs_tune -L <label> /dev/XXX
* xfs: xfs_admin -L <label> /dev/XXX
* fat/vfat: There is no tool
* ntfs: ntfslabel /dev/XXX <label< or change it using Windows.

I personally wouldn't change the label of any windows partition ( fat or ntfs ) from linux. As noted above I would use Windows Disk Manager.

Also, and this may be just me, but blkid never gets updated ( or I don't know how to update it ) to the new information . The next time you use it you need to run blkid -c /dev/null

[viking777]

Also, and this may be just me, but blkid never gets updated ( or I don't know how to update it ) to the new information . The next time you use it you need to run blkid -c /dev/null

Hi altair4. This is interesting.

Firstly if you want to refresh blkid you delete /etc/blkid.tab then reboot (or you can just delete the entries in the file if you prefer). But this is really a sledge hammer to crack a nut and your way looks much better, but I can't get it to work. If I run the command you suggest I just get nothing, the only way to get it to report anything at all is to use blkid on its own.

What am I missing here?

[viking777]

Thanks viking777 and proxima centauri.

I believe the command e2label doesn't work with ntfs partitions - these were labelled in the Windows Disk Manager.

I had a good look at the manual for fstab and it appears that I was giving 2 names for each partition - i.e. 2 entries in one field. I have now removed the second and await my next reboot to assess the result. I've also appended -3g to ntfs though I don't think that actually matters. The mount points have the same names - it is necessary to use " " to enclose the name which uses special characters ( ) when entering it. It is then interpreted correctly.

The manual is less than clear (not unusual!) about the options to specify in the 4th field - which determines mounting. It appears that there must be a command mount -a in the boot script, but I'm not a developer and can't read the scripts.

Theo,

This is an excellent site for understanding fstab, have a look if you havn't seen it already.

http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

[altair4]

If I run the command you suggest I just get nothing, the only way to get it to report anything at all is to use blkid on its own.
What am I missing here?

That's because I'm an idiot. It's sudo blkid -c /dev/null. Apparently the "-c /dev/null" requires privileged access. Sorry, I should be more careful when I post these things

[viking777]

If I run the command you suggest I just get nothing, the only way to get it to report anything at all is to use blkid on its own.
What am I missing here?

That's because I'm an idiot. It's sudo blkid -c /dev/null. Apparently the "-c /dev/null" requires privileged access. Sorry, I should be more careful when I post these things

Now I've got, thanks a lot. As I suspected much better than my method.

[T J Tulley]

The discussion about blkid was a digression - for those interested, see man blkid (revised Oct. 08).
[Edit: I forgot to thank viking777 for the reference to the TuxFiles article.]
Yesterday I edited fstab entering the device locations (sda et c.) instead of their labels in the first field of each of the 3 lines in fstab. That produced a dialog box reporting "3 bad lines in fstab" when I tried to mount them by clicking in Computer.

I have replaced the locations by the labels, and removed the -3g extension from the filetype; the options specified in the 4th field are rw,dev,auto so that the 3 lines now read:
# /dev/sda1
/dev/"(E)DI8:H7R" /media/(E)DI8:H7R ntfs rw,dev,auto 0 0
# /dev/sdb1
/dev/Backups /media/Backups ntfs rw,dev,auto 0 0
# /dev/sdc1
/dev/SATABkps /media/SATABkps ntfs rw,dev,auto 0 0
and the system boots but it is necessary to click on these 3 items as shown in Computer to get them to mount.

Incidentally, for each, a dialog box reports that it can't do it - while in fact it does!

This is now just a small delay in the effective boot process, but I would very much like to get these 3 partitions mounted automatically. I use an array of links on the desktop to access frequently-used files in these partitions. They appear broken when their targets are not mounted, but are repaired as soon as I click on them after the targets are mounted.

Can anybody please help? I can bypass the problem by hibernating but it remains a challenge!

[viking777]

It looks to me like you are mixing up names and device addresses.

The entry for your first device should be either

/dev/sda1 /media/(E)DI8:H7R ntfs-3g rw,dev,auto 0 0

or

LABEL=(E)DI8:H7R /media/(E)DI8:H7R ntfs-3g rw,dev,auto 0 0

(You may need the the "" marks because of the special characters I don't know, the easy way would be to rename them to something sensible without those characters if you want to use the LABEL method)

The other two devices would need to be changed in a similar manner.

[altair4]

OK, since I got yelled at for a diversion I guess I should offer my opinion.

(1) You can eliminate a lot of permission problems by having mount points in your own home directory. So I would ( assuming username = tjtulley for example )

mkdir /home/tjtulley/altair ( you've got to find a better name than (E)DI8:H7R )
mkdir /home/tjtulley/Backups
mkdir /home/tjtulley/SATABkps

(2) In fstab I would do the following. ( Note: in Mint, Ubuntu,etc.. ntsf=ntfs-3g , which is very confusing, so "rw" is redundant )
/dev/sda1 /home/tjtulley/altair ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
/dev/sdb1 /home/tjtulley/Backups ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
/dev/sdc1 /home/tjtulley/SATABkps ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

If sda1,sdb1, and sdc1 are currently not mounted then you can issue the following command:
sudo mount -a. This will force a mount using the data contained in fstab for all partiitions that have not already been mounted. Saves you a reboot.

NOTE TO FRED: Sorry for stepping on your turf - you're the expert on this kind of thing here. How did I do?

EDIT: Maybe I'm reading this wrong but:

/dev/sdb4 * 15298 24321 72485280 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)

Doesn't the asterisk signify a bootable partition and isn't sdb4 an Extended Partition wrapper? How can this be?

[altair4]

I was searching something else out and found this:

Thanks a lot Husse - that certainly looks like the explanation.
A complication about UUIDs is that 3 of my partitions are ntfs disk copies with identical UUIDs - however these are never Linux partitions, but I can't use UUIDs to mount them. They have Labels.

Is this the same box? Can you please do a sudo blkid -c /dev/null as viking777 suggested yesterday and share that with us. If sda1, sdb1, sdc1 have identical UUIDs then what I wrote above probably wont work. LABEL will work but you really need to boot into windows and fix that (E)DI8:H7R thing - it's driving me nuts.

[T J Tulley]

No need for the blkid - these are not the ntfs partitions which I mentioned as having identical uuids- those are all partition images created by the DriveImage program in Windows - only one of those is in this group.

Sorry my label offends you - I have a sentimental attachment to it! It represents the end of a short period when I was using DriveImage as a backup tool. The drive letter (Windows) was E, the code DI8 means Drive Image 8 and H7R means 2007 July 26th - which was when my Windows XP Pro on this machine finally packed up. So it would be difficult to change the label anyway - I have to go to my laptop if I want to use Windows.

[For dates I use "Extended hex" with I included and O excluded (because of the serif font usually used in typescript) This goes up to W for 31].

I am still using that old Windows partition as my main data store - including all my pre-Linux files. Of course to be sensible I should copy the data to an ext3 partition and leave the rest behind. There is also no real reason for my 2 backup partitions to be ntfs but reorganising would be a considerable effort.

Thanks for your interest and advice.

[altair4]

No need for the blkid - these are not the ntfs partitions which I mentioned as having identical uuids- those are all partition images created by the DriveImage program in Windows - only one of those is in this group.

Even if only one in this group has a duplicate UUID I don't think fstab will be able to reconcile sdxy. In any event without the output from sudo blkid -c /dev/null I can offer you nothing more than comic relief.

Have a nice day.

[T J Tulley]

Apologies! Here's the output from the command:
theo@TJT4Felicia1 ~ $ sudo blkid -c /dev/null
[sudo] password for theo:
/dev/sda1: UUID="06E4035FE403507B" LABEL="(E)DI8:H7R" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda2: UUID="f4e02002-a07c-4331-8e14-6d1e6febb77b" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sda3: UUID="cf721c13-6670-49e3-95a4-ef51eb7787af" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda4: UUID="380d62a8-3931-4535-93c1-7bf7e84d2d33" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="06E4035FE403507B" LABEL="Backups" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb2: UUID="5238E47B38E46009" LABEL="PC Scheduled " TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb3: UUID="340C0C6F0C0C2E84" LABEL="D&S Scheduled" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb5: LABEL="root-Elyssa4" UUID="8800ae5a-0d95-4c44-bb35-8b027f4ba2a4" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sdb6: LABEL="home-E4" UUID="449de6a1-a21d-438a-a19f-431ddcbb7843" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdb7: UUID="2486fda4-a0e5-49e2-b424-988f2829e3b5" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdb8: LABEL="home-E2" UUID="82dae80e-ab23-412b-8c8b-655eae8883f0" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdc1: UUID="2044A85E4B03DE64" LABEL="SATABkps" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdc5: LABEL="Puppy-Linux" UUID="1a400624-2114-4820-ba41-affcf1be08b3" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdc6: UUID="705174d5-93b8-42b8-a645-1262c979f37f" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdc7: UUID="0fa6b1ef-5184-4539-8763-cb8f9171ee63" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdc8: UUID="4c53a17d-c92c-4e6a-af3e-66665fa980bc" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sdc9: UUID="879da11d-4d05-4c1c-8a60-dbc03454f2ac" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdc10: LABEL="home-Daryna" UUID="97fb1410-90da-4c26-bae6-7fa73ca2c775" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sdc11: UUID="6fae8eea-816e-4c0d-ac1f-3924b691c504" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sdc12: UUID="409c1620-abb2-49d9-957d-f4b0637d7728" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"

and we see that sda1 and sdb1 have identical uuids - I must somehow have changed the original label of sdb1 to "Backups".

Anyway, I'm not using uuids as identifiers in fstab so it shouldn't matter.

The problem is that this has worked for the same partitions in previous versions of Mint, but now not in Felicia.

[altair4]

mkdir /home/theo/EDI8H7R ( a compromise )
mkdir /home/theo/Backups
mkdir /home/theo/SATABkps

In fstab:

LABEL="(E)DI8:H7R" /home/theo/EDI8H7R ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
LABEL=Backups /home/theo/Backups ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
LABEL=SATABkps /home/theo/SATABkps ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

I really don't know about the first one. I don't know if linux can handle spaces in LABEL= let alone (,),and :. I put quotes around it because I don't know what to do with it.

[T J Tulley]

Altair4 wrote (and I missed it at the time): "you really need to boot into windows and fix that (E)DI8:H7R thing - it's driving me nuts."

Sorry about that - I can't open Windows on this machine, and by now I've acquired a familiarity with that name - the partition is my main data store, backed up to other drives.

The interesting bit now is that after a long gap I tried again editing fstab to use the basic partition locations - sda1, sdb1 and sdc1 - and to my surprise it has booted successfully with them all mounted! That means all my desktop links are immediately effective. They appeared broken if my data partition wasn't initially mounted.

Clearly the previous settings were giving 2 identifiers for each, as Viking777 suggested.

I shall continue mostly to hibernate - it's quicker. Sometimes it takes a fair while to generate the image in swap; if I switch off too soon I get errors in the root partition which are automatically fixed by fsck and an automatic re-boot follows.