[SOLVED] Automount Internal Hard Drives (and Desktop Folder links)

[Rotsiser Mho]

Hello,

I've looked around quite a bit, but the more I read the more confused I become. I would like all of my hard drives mounted automatically when I log in. I have created several links to folders within the drives that become invalid on a reboot. And since, for example, my music collection is on one of these drives, when I log in, Amarok starts up and says I have 0 songs in my collection even if I re-mount the drive (I have it scanning everything in my home/My Music folder which contains a link to a folder containing my music on one of the other drives).

I know I can play around with fstab but I'm not sure how to do that without screwing up the drives in the "Places" pane in Dolphin. Basically I just want to automount the drives as Dolphin currently sees them. Does that make sense? I also want to do this with an external USB drive. They all appear the same to me in Dolphin. Some drives are NTFS, one is FAT32 and one (the USB drive) is EXT3. I am using Kubuntu 10.04.

Thanks!

[Snowhog]

Re: Automount Internal Hard Drives (and Desktop Folder links)

You have two options.

1) System Settings > Advanced > Removable Devices and mark Enable automatic mounting of removable media (Because the other partitions are not Linux file systems, you will likely be prompted for your password)

2) add entries in /etc/fstab for each partition you want automatically mounted when the system boots. (This method won't prompt you for your password when accessing the partitions)

If you are not comfortable with editing /etc/fstab, we can assist you. Open a console and type:

sudo fdisk -l

Copy and paste the output.

sudo blkid

Copy and paste the output.

With this information we can show you the entries you need to add to your /etc/fstab file.

[Rotsiser Mho]

Re: Automount Internal Hard Drives (and Desktop Folder links)

Thanks Snowhog. I really like option one, but yes, it prompted me for my password 8 times! I have quite a few drives. I guess we go with option two although it would be nice if there was a setting to allow mounting of non-native file systems without a password. Why is the password required? Is there any way at all to disable that?

sudo fdisk -l

See attachment. I get the error: "PHP encountered a stack overflow" if I paste everything!

sudo blkid

/dev/sda1: LABEL="Does It Work" UUID="0CF60D9DF60D8862" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="Our Stuff" UUID="1AE87024E86FFFF5" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sdc1: LABEL="Video Games" UUID="98E435EAE435CAF0" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sdd1: LABEL="Maybe Unsafe" UUID="4A14EA9314EA80F5" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sdf1: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="C0809D70809D6E22" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sdf2: LABEL="Stuff" UUID="B0249F39249F0190" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sdf3: LABEL="~Main" UUID="206C5EAD6C5E7E0A" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sdf5: UUID="7769b3ff-8163-4e8c-90d5-70666aaa3d67" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sdf6: UUID="6e3f7358-5159-4bfb-832b-65c9852edff0" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sdg1: LABEL="To Sort" UUID="BEA0E843A0E803AD" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sde1: LABEL="To Sort" UUID="A03C8C603C8C3378" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sdh1: LABEL="JustInCase" UUID="C271-B38F" TYPE="vfat" 
/dev/sdh2: LABEL="HTPC" UUID="6292abed-5a3e-4ed1-b279-8cb84d9d1416" TYPE="ext3"

[Snowhog]

Re: Automount Internal Hard Drives (and Desktop Folder links)

No problem.

Okay, here is your drive/partition data:

  Device Boot   Start     End   Blocks  Id System
/dev/sda1  *      1    38914  312568832  7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb1        1    24321  195358401  7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc1        1    24321  195358401  7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdd1        1    24321  195358401  7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdf1  *      1     13   102400  7 HPFS/NTFS             
/dev/sdf2       13   166280 1335532961+  7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdf3     178486   182402  31456256  7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdf4     166280   178486  98043905  5 Extended
/dev/sdf5     166280   177983  94011392  83 Linux
/dev/sdf6     177984   178486   4031488  82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdg1        1    38913  312568641  7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sde1        1    24321  195358401  7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdh1     181097   182401  10482412+  b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdh2        1   181096 1454653588+ 83 Linux

You said that you were prompted '8 times', but in the list above, there are nine HPFS/NTFS partitions. /dev/sdh1 (W95 FAT32) is your USB drive. Are all the HPFS/NTFS partions on internal HDs?

[Snowhog]

Re: Automount Internal Hard Drives (and Desktop Folder links)

To mount your NTFS partition permanently, add your version of the following line into the file system table, fstab. [and leave the last line in the file as a blank line.] Recommended option for world-writeable mount:

/dev/sdb1 /path_to/mount_point ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

When you reboot, the partion will mount into the folder /path_to/mount_point with permissions drwxrwxrwx, i.e with read/write access for everybody, in the style of Microsoft's insecure filesystems.

Create mount points in /media. Give them names that are meaningful to the partitions you will mount.

[Rotsiser Mho]

Re: Automount Internal Hard Drives (and Desktop Folder links)

Thanks Snowhog! That worked perfectly! I do wish this were a little more user-friendly however. Is it for security reasons that the password is required at each log-in if the drives aren't in fstab?

[Snowhog]

Re: [SOLVED] Automount Internal Hard Drives (and Desktop Folder links)

You are welcome.

Security? Not really. I don't know why the developers opted to make the access to non-Linux, removable devices, they way they have. :P