Linux Debian support - New Debian install doesn't recognize/automount all partitions

Author

New Debian install doesn't recognize/automount all partitions

Robert Glueck

2005-06-23, 5:51 pm

I recently used the Debianpure CD to install a Debian base system plus
desktop environment. This install doesn't recognize and mount all of my
HD partitions. fstab only lists the new Debian partition, swap, floppy,
CD-ROM and USB thumbdrives, i.e.

<file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb4 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdb6 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sda /media/usb0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdb /media/usb1 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdc /media/usb2 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

In addition to these, I have another dozen HD partitions (on two HD
drives) that allow me to multiboot into several other OS's. Xandros
automatically recognizes all of these on boot up and mounts them, and so
does Knoppix, Kanotix, Mepis, Libranet etc. Ubuntu, on the other hand,
behaves like Debianpure, it doesn't recognize them either.

What is the default behavior for Debian and what do I have to do to have
this straight Debian system recognize and automount all of these other
partitions?

Does this failure possibly have to do with the fact that I told the
Debian installer to put the GRUB boot loader on a floppy rather than in
the boot directory of the Debian partition (where I probably should have
put it, as I did with my other Linux OS installs, with the LILO boot
loader of Xandros residing in the MBR of my first HD and managing the
booting of all of the OS's). What would I have to do to rectify this
mistake, i.e. to put the Debian GRUB into the Debian partition, and does
it make any difference?

Robert

Sparky

2005-06-23, 5:51 pm

Robert Glueck wrote:
>...<stuff deleted>...Ubuntu, on the other hand,
> behaves like Debianpure, it doesn't recognize them either.
>
> What is the default behavior for Debian and what do I have to do to have
> this straight Debian system recognize and automount all of these other
> partitions?
>
> Does this failure possibly have to do with the fact that I told the
> Debian installer to put the GRUB boot loader on a floppy rather than in
> the boot directory of the Debian partition ...<stuff deleted>...
>
> Robert

Hi Robert;

I've installed Ubuntu on my P4/ATI desktop and vaio r505 laptop, both
using default settings including that for GRUB. My installations
exhibit the same behavior. In short, we've the same results regardless
of the GRUB install.

regards,
-Sparky

p.s. if you find the answer to the automount, please post here.

Andreas Janssen

2005-06-23, 5:51 pm

Hello

Robert Glueck (<rglk@web.de> ) wrote:

> What is the default behavior for Debian and what do I have to do to
> have this straight Debian system recognize and automount all of these
> other partitions?

The default behaviour of Debian is to add the partitions to the fstab
that you selected during the installation. If you didn't choose the
other partitions during installation, add them to your fstab yourself.

best regards
Andreas Janssen

--
Andreas Janssen <andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com>
PGP-Key-ID: 0xDC801674 ICQ #17079270
Registered Linux User #267976
http://www.andreas-janssen.de/debian-tipps-sarge.html

Robert Glueck

2005-06-23, 5:51 pm

Andreas Janssen wrote:

> Hello
>
> Robert Glueck (<rglk@web.de> ) wrote:
>
>
>
>
> The default behaviour of Debian is to add the partitions to the fstab
> that you selected during the installation. If you didn't choose the
> other partitions during installation, add them to your fstab yourself.
>
> best regards
> Andreas Janssen
>

I don't recall that during the install I had a choice of which
partitions I wanted to have recognized and/or automounted on bootup. I
did the install with the Debianpure CD which uses the new Debian installer.

In any case, I have edited /etc/fstab using nano in a root console. The
question arises, however, what syntax to use for specifying the mount
points. Xandros uses /disks/hdb.., Mepis uses /mnt/hdb.., and the
Debian install in question uses /media/..., at least for removable media
(floppy, CD-ROM, USB flashdrives). What should I use for hard disk
partitions?

At this point, I've edited /etc/fstab to look as follows:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb4 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdb6 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/C vfat
rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,nouser,async,umas
k=0 0 0
/dev/hda2 /mnt/D ntfs
ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,nouser,async,umas
k=0,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/fedora ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb3 /mnt/xandros2 reiserfs rw 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /mnt/mdkroot ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb7 /mnt/mdkhome ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb8 /mnt/mepis ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb9 /mnt/xandros3 reiserfs rw 0 0
/dev/hdb10 /mnt/slax ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb11 /mnt/beatrix ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sda /media/usb0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdb /media/usb1 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdc /media/usb2 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

Is this correct? As a reminder, this is an install of Debian 3.1
testing done via Debianpure.

An additional question: What do I have to do to have Debian automount
these partitions at bootup?

Robert

gregor herrmann

2005-06-23, 5:51 pm

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 15:14:53 -0400, Robert Glueck wrote:

> In any case, I have edited /etc/fstab using nano in a root console. The
> question arises, however, what syntax to use for specifying the mount
> points. Xandros uses /disks/hdb.., Mepis uses /mnt/hdb.., and the
> Debian install in question uses /media/..., at least for removable media
> (floppy, CD-ROM, USB flashdrives). What should I use for hard disk
> partitions?

Whatever you like, just make sure the mountpoints exist.

> An additional question: What do I have to do to have Debian automount
> these partitions at bootup?

As long as you don't have the noauto option in the relevant lines of
/etc/fstab they should get mounted at boot time.

gregor
--
.''`. http://info.comodo.priv.at/ | gpg key ID: 0x00F3CFE4
: :' : infos zur usenet-hierarchie at.*: http://www.usenet.at/
`. `' member of https://www.vibe.at/ | how to reply: http://got.to/quote/
`-

Robert Glueck

2005-06-23, 5:51 pm

gregor herrmann wrote:

> .........
>
>Whatever you like, just make sure the mountpoints exist.
>
> .........

I'm not sure I know how to create mount points. Right now, the /mnt
directory in Debian is empty whereas the /media directory has two kinds
of subdirectories in it, one set that are real directories (e.g.
floppy0, cdrom0, usb0, etc.) and another set (e.g. floppy, cdrom, usb)
that merely point to the appropriate members of the first set. All of
these directories are empty (at least when I'm looking at them from
another Linux OS in another partition, as I do now).

To create these mount points would it suffice for me to boot into Debian
and then open a console as root and enter

# mkdir /mnt/hda1
# mkdir /mnt/hda2
# mkdir /mnt/hdb1

etc. etc.?

gregor herrmann

2005-06-23, 5:51 pm

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 17:54:15 -0400, Robert Glueck wrote:

> To create these mount points would it suffice for me to boot into Debian
> and then open a console as root and enter
>
> # mkdir /mnt/hda1
> # mkdir /mnt/hda2
> # mkdir /mnt/hdb1

Yes.

gregor
--
.''`. http://info.comodo.priv.at/ | gpg key ID: 0x00F3CFE4
: :' : infos zur usenet-hierarchie at.*: http://www.usenet.at/
`. `' member of https://www.vibe.at/ | how to reply: http://got.to/quote/
`-

Eduardo Silva

2005-06-23, 8:46 pm

Em Thu, 23 Jun 2005 17:54:15 -0400, Robert Glueck escreveu:

> gregor herrmann wrote:
> # mkdir /mnt/hda1
> # mkdir /mnt/hda2
> # mkdir /mnt/hdb1
>
> etc. etc.?

yes, and configure /etc/fstab correctly to use these directories as mount
points for your hardisks.

Eduardo

Robert Glueck

2005-06-24, 2:46 am

Thanks to everyone who responded to my queries. I followed your advice
and got it to work.

For the benefit of Sparky who desires to do the same with his Ubuntu
install I'll summarize what I did:

1. Create new mount points in the /mnt dir for the partitions that you
want your distro to recognize and mount. I.e. open a console as root
and enter: mkdir /mnt/name_of_partition. I did this for all the
partitions that I wanted Debian to access, i.e.

.....# mkdir /mnt/fedora
.....# mkdir /mnt/xandros2
.....# mkdir /mnt/mepis

etc. etc. as I specified in a posting above.

2. Edit /etc/fstab as root, e.g. open a console, su to root and enter
.....# nano /etc/fstab (if you have the nano editor installed)

Add the lines

/dev/hd.... /mnt/name_of_partition <filesystem type> etc. etc.

to fstab along the lines of what I did and save the new fstab.

3. Shutdown the OS and reboot. On reboot, Debian will now automount
all the partitions added to fstab (except for the ones excluded by
noauto), and you can access them in your file manager, for read at least
if not for write.

The removable media, i.e. floppy, CD-ROM, USB flashdrives etc. are a
little more complicated, and my Debian install didn't make them
available by default (note the noauto parameter for most of them in
fstab). To mount my floppy drive manually, I open a console as root and
enter

mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy

I imagine I can mount the other removable media in an analogous fashion;
I only need to know the filesystem type which for most of them in my
system is vfat.

A remaining question for the more experienced Debian users: Is it
prudent to configure fstab to also automount the removable media at
bootup? That certainly would be convenient and potential problems can't
be great as is apparent by the fact that the Debian variants Knoppix,
Kanotix, Xandros, and Mepis all do automount these at bootup. Why
doesn't straight Debian do this as a default?

What would be your advice?

Robert

Robert Glueck

2005-06-24, 2:46 am

gregor herrmann

2005-06-24, 8:46 pm

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 02:14:17 -0400, Robert Glueck wrote:

> 1. Create new mount points [..]
> 2. Edit /etc/fstab [..]
> 3. Shutdown the OS and reboot.

A simple `mount -a` would have done the same ;-)

> mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy

Or just `mount /media/floppy` or `mount /dev/fd0`

> I imagine I can mount the other removable media in an analogous fashion;
> I only need to know the filesystem type which for most of them in my
> system is vfat.

If it's in fstab you shouldn't need to type it on the command line.

> A remaining question for the more experienced Debian users: Is it
> prudent to configure fstab to also automount the removable media at
> bootup?

If you always have a floppy and a CD-ROM in the respective drives :-)

> That certainly would be convenient and potential problems can't
> be great as is apparent by the fact that the Debian variants Knoppix,
> Kanotix, Xandros, and Mepis all do automount these at bootup. Why
> doesn't straight Debian do this as a default?

I don't think those distributions can mount a non-existing device at
boot time either, but probably they use some mechanism (maybe
automount) that detects inserted devices later.

gregor
--
.''`. http://info.comodo.priv.at/ | gpg key ID: 0x00F3CFE4
: :' : infos zur usenet-hierarchie at.*: http://www.usenet.at/
`. `' member of https://www.vibe.at/ | how to reply: http://got.to/quote/
`-

DarbyCrash

2005-06-25, 5:47 pm

Robert Glueck wrote:
> Thanks to everyone who responded to my queries. I followed your advice
> and got it to work.
>
> For the benefit of Sparky who desires to do the same with his Ubuntu
> install I'll summarize what I did:
>
> 1. Create new mount points in the /mnt dir for the partitions that you
> want your distro to recognize and mount. I.e. open a console as root
> and enter: mkdir /mnt/name_of_partition. I did this for all the
> partitions that I wanted Debian to access, i.e.
>
> ....# mkdir /mnt/fedora
> ....# mkdir /mnt/xandros2
> ....# mkdir /mnt/mepis
>
> etc. etc. as I specified in a posting above.
>
> 2. Edit /etc/fstab as root, e.g. open a console, su to root and enter
> ....# nano /etc/fstab (if you have the nano editor installed)
>
> Add the lines
>
> /dev/hd.... /mnt/name_of_partition <filesystem type> etc. etc.
>
> to fstab along the lines of what I did and save the new fstab.
>
> 3. Shutdown the OS and reboot. On reboot, Debian will now automount
> all the partitions added to fstab (except for the ones excluded by
> noauto), and you can access them in your file manager, for read at least
> if not for write.
>
> The removable media, i.e. floppy, CD-ROM, USB flashdrives etc. are a
> little more complicated, and my Debian install didn't make them
> available by default (note the noauto parameter for most of them in
> fstab). To mount my floppy drive manually, I open a console as root and
> enter
>
> mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy
>
> I imagine I can mount the other removable media in an analogous fashion;
> I only need to know the filesystem type which for most of them in my
> system is vfat.
>
> A remaining question for the more experienced Debian users: Is it
> prudent to configure fstab to also automount the removable media at
> bootup? That certainly would be convenient and potential problems can't
> be great as is apparent by the fact that the Debian variants Knoppix,
> Kanotix, Xandros, and Mepis all do automount these at bootup. Why
> doesn't straight Debian do this as a default?
>
> What would be your advice?
>
> Robert
>

I wouldnt try automounting removable media through fstab. Devices like
CD-ROMs can't be opened while their mounted and can only be mounted when
there's media in the drive. If you mount something like the CD-ROM at
boot you'd have to unmount it to open the drive and mount it again once
you put the CD in. Look into something like autofs or hotplug to
automount devices.

--
"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything..."