Mounting DATA partition in Mint 19

[alynur]

Hello Linux people. A while back when I had first installed Mint 17 and went through the process of creating a DATA partition and then symlinking my home folders to it, I was unable to boot into Mint. I had used the same fstab scheme that I had used in Ubuntu 16.04. After getting help here on this forum, I resolved the problem by modifying the fstab as such
# User created DATA partition, mounted at /mnt/DATA
UUID=585c3e2f-c6be-4802-885d-eead48242766  /mnt/DATA     ext4      defaults,noatime,noauto 0 2

This worked fine and again in Mint 18. But now I'm trying to use the same scheme in Mint 19 and I keep getting kicked into emergency mode, just as I had at the beginning. The journal shows that it is the mounting of the DATA partition that is failing due to dependencies. What gives, what is wrong with this fstab entry?

[MrEen]

Hi alynur. I'm certainly no expert on this, but I wonder if noauto might be the cause. I would think you DO want it automounted at boot. Couldn't hurt to try without it and see.

EDIT: Looking at your previous thread, did you remember to add the Startup Application command mount /mnt/DATA?

[alynur]

Hi alynur. I'm certainly no expert on this, but I wonder if noauto might be the cause. I would think you DO want it automounted at boot. Couldn't hurt to try without it and see.

EDIT: Looking at your previous thread, did you remember to add the Startup Application command mount /mnt/DATA?

Actually, the noauto was how I got the fstab entry to work in Mint 17 and 18, it wasn't necessary in Ubuntu. I had tried it without it and that didn't work either. Please understand, it's not a problem of the DATA partition not being mounted after boot up, it's a boot up problem. At the moment I can't get into Mint.

[alynur]

In Community,LinuxMint.com, a tutorial showed the end of the entry should read defaults o 2
I tried that also and still I get bumped into emergency mode on boot up.

[slipstick]

OK - silly suggestion, probably, but sometimes people overlook or forget the obvious. You did create a /mnt/DATA mount point, right?

[srq2625]

In Community,LinuxMint.com, a tutorial showed the end of the entry should read defaults o 2
I tried that also and still I get bumped into emergency mode on boot up.

The end of the line should be defaults 0 2

The next to last character is zero, not the lower-case letter o (as in oscar).

And, if the drive is not always available, I use something like: UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx /mnt/Working ext4 rw,nofail 0 2

The nofail prevents a time-out when booting if the disk is not found.

A really good source of information for fstab is found in the Arch fstab wiki

[MintBean]

There's no need to play with fstab if you don't have a particular urge to. Mounting partitions using Gnome Disc Utility is pretty intuitive.
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=255060

[Flemur]

# User created DATA partition, mounted at /mnt/DATA
UUID=585c3e2f-c6be-4802-885d-eead48242766  /mnt/DATA     ext4      defaults,noatime,noauto 0 2
This worked fine and again in Mint 18. But now I'm trying to use the same scheme in Mint 19 and I keep getting kicked into emergency mode, just as I had at the beginning. The journal shows that it is the mounting of the DATA partition that is failing due to dependencies. What gives, what is wrong with this fstab entry?

What happens if you just comment out that line? When I've had errors like that it (booting) just wastes 1.5 minutes until it gives up...unless the problem is with the OS partition. Are you sure the OS ("/") line is OK in fstab?

That line is almost exactly like the one I have for a non-auto-mounting Ubuntu OS partition:

Code: Select all

# Don't mount at boot:
#
LABEL=UBUN  /mnt/UBUN  ext4 defaults,noauto,user,noatime  0 2

I mount it by hand when I need to get to the Ubuntu OS.

My data partition is similar, though:

Code: Select all

# Mount at boot:
LABEL=DATA  /mnt/DATA  ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2

Check that your UUIDs match:

Code: Select all

sudo blkid

I'm not running Mint 19, but I'd be surprised if 19 has significantly different fstab entries than 18 or 17 ...

[altair4]

The journal shows that it is the mounting of the DATA partition that is failing due to dependencies.

Your current line in fstab that controls this mount is this:

UUID=585c3e2f-c6be-4802-885d-eead48242766 /mnt/DATA ext4 defaults,noatime,noauto 0 2

systemd will have created a "mount" unit named after the mount point - in this case /mnt/DATA becomes a mnt-DATA.mount unit.

So the next time you boot or reboot open a terminal and run this command to see what "dependency" is giving it grief:

Code: Select all

systemctl list-dependencies mnt-DATA.mount

EDIT: To put this in context in an earlier post on your previous version of Mint I suggested this:

Another option if you want to go with the Startup Applications route is to change your fstab entry to this:

Code: Select all

UUID=585c3e2f-c6be-4802-885d-eead48242766 /mnt/DATA     ext4  defaults,noatime,noauto,user,exec 0 2

noauto = will prevent this partition from mounting at boot time.
user = will make it so you don't have to be root / sudo to mount it.

Then your Startup Application command would be: mount /mnt/DATA

You told me that didn't work but you made it work by removing the user,exec options. From my perspecitive without the user option your startup application command wouldn't work and the partition would never mount. But it worked for you somehow so your problem has always been a strange one.

[alynur]

There's no need to play with fstab if you don't have a particular urge to. Mounting partitions using Gnome Disc Utility is pretty intuitive.
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=255060

Hi MintBean, not exactly what I wanted but using the Disc utility did the trick. The guys at the onboard Mint chat pointed me there. What gets to me is why Mint has to be so different from Ubuntu. It was super easy with Ubuntu.

[altair4]

For the benefit of those of us ( OK, maybe it's just me ) who do not use this Disc Utility thingy you speak of would you mind sharing with us the line in fstab that it created for this partition?

[MintBean]

/dev/disk/by-uuid/5E8AA2BB8AA28ED9 /mnt/Data auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0Okay, not his setup, but the only difference is UUID.

'/dev/disk/by-uuid/' is just an alternative for 'UUID='