How to fstab

[Daverobb]

I assumed it was a FAT32 drive because I have another identical drive that shows up on my ubuntu as such. Is there a command that I can use to check the file system used?

[bodhi.zazen]

Most likely it is a fat (vfat) partition.

go into fdisk again, delete the Linux partition, make a new fat partition.

then re-try.

If that fails, go into fdisk and again delete the partition.

Then use testdisk. testdisk is easy to use as well and is in the Ubuntu repositories.

[Daverobb]

I tried both but could not do as you suggested -- maybe I wasn't doing it correctly - here are the options in fdisk - deleteing the partition iseems easy enough but how do I create a FAT partition?

 sudo fdisk /dev/sdc1

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 38912.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): m
Command action
   a   toggle a bootable flag
   b   edit bsd disklabel
   c   toggle the dos compatibility flag
   d   delete a partition
   l   list known partition types
   m   print this menu
   n   add a new partition
   o   create a new empty DOS partition table
   p   print the partition table
   q   quit without saving changes
   s   create a new empty Sun disklabel
   t   change a partition's system id
   u   change display/entry units
   v   verify the partition table
   w   write table to disk and exit
   x   extra functionality (experts only)

Command (m for help):

[bodhi.zazen]

At the fdisk prompt, use l (that is a small "L") to list the types of partitions. Partition types are identified by numbers (I do not recall the number for FAT).

then use the t to change the type of partition. 82 = linux, change it to fat.

[vitotol]

thank you guys, really helpful thread... now my ntfs data partition is mounted automatically

[gjhicks]

Hi,

Have been trying to get a ext3 partition to mount (using Thunar, in Xubuntu 8.04), using your guide. Keep getting "permission denied".

Here is my saga:

From your guide (page 1) on mounting native linux file systems:

fstab options: users,noauto

mount /mnt/ext3 mounts the partition.
Permissions:
Quote:
bodhi@Arch:~$mount /mnt/ext3/
bodhi@Arch:~$ls -l /mnt | grep ext3
drwxr-xr-x 3 bodhi users 1024 2006-11-07 17:26 ext3
Note: The user can mount the device and has rw permissions.
Note: Ownership remains bodhi:users

My settings, in /etc/fstab:

# Entry for /dev/sda5 :
/dev/sda5 /media/ubuntu8 ext3 users,noauto 0 0

Following a post of yours elsewhere: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-482796.html June 26, 2007
I entered the following command (first one is just to show the partition was not mounted):

geoff@geoff-eeepc:~$ umount /media/ubuntu8
umount: /media/ubuntu8 is not mounted (according to mtab)

geoff@geoff-eeepc:~$ ls -l /media | grep ubuntu8
drwxr----- 2 root root 4096 2008-09-05 21:32 ubuntu8

geoff@geoff-eeepc:~$ mount /media/ubuntu8

geoff@geoff-eeepc:~$ ls -l /media | grep ubuntu8
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 4096 2008-09-06 10:00 ubuntu8

So, the mount point still has 'root' ownership, not what should have happened, according to the mentioned post.

Appreciate your comments, thanks.

[bodhi.zazen]

with the partition mounted, just do a chown :

sudo chown goeff.goeff /media/ubuntu8

[gjhicks]

Hi,

Thanks for your quick reply.

This other partition is my ubuntu 8.04 installation.

If I "chown" the whole partition, will this change the permissions for when I boot to this partition - which I am guessing would not be a good thing?

Thanks,
Geoff

[bodhi.zazen]

Ah, yes, do not chown the entire partition.

What are the permissions of the rest of the directories (such as the user directories in /home) ?

Depending on what you are wanting, for simple access to files use sudo or gksu (gksu nautilus)

If you want a shared data partition, make a shared directory in ubuntu at say /mnt/data

then set ownershiip and permission on /mnt/data

then mount the ubuntu partition and use mount --bind

mount --bind /media/ubuntu8/mnt/data /mnt/data

[gjhicks]

Hi,

Once again, thanks for the quick reply!

Perhaps I should clarify the problem:

- am currently using ubuntu 8, the nautilus file browser will mount partitions that do not appear in /etc/fstab, in such a way that files can be edited on such partitions.

- I wanted to try using xubuntu (as I have an eeepc and disk space is an issue), the included thunar file browser would not mount the partitions, whether they were in /etc/fstab or not - even with 'users' in the fstab entry.

- so, for xubuntu, I set up the /etc/fstab as follows:

/dev/sda2 /media/sda2 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_AU.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_AU.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/sda5 /media/ubuntu8 ext3 defaults, 0 0

now the partitions are auto-mounted at boot and thunar can access them, with editing possible on these partitions.

So, I guess the problem is the way that nautilus mounts the partitions is not available either in xubuntu and/or by thunar.

Anyway, problem solved - though not how I would have liked.

Thanks very much for your assistance,

Geoff.