Setting up folders on HDD

[Impavidus]

The mountpoint /media/username/partitionlabel is used for partitions mounted by the file manager. If you mount your partition automatically at boot using /etc/fstab, it's better to mount it somewhere else, or confusing things might happen.

[KieranFitzgerald]

I have upgraded to 20.04 seems ok
ran oldfreds commands up to and including

sudo mount -a
ln -s /mnt/data/Music


I have a folder called Music but it is not accessible see screen shot
Clicking on the file brings up a error saying the file does not exist

How do I create the file Music on the HDD? I can't see it under files.

[ajgreeny]

I am totally confused about where exactly you have got to so far, and I think your problem is a result of your lack of understanding of Linix permissions.
Does that partition with the Music folder on it belong to you as user, and does it mount at boot, ie, is it included in /etc/fstab file?
Please show us the output of

cat /etc/fstab

The link that I presume you have made is broken which usually means that the disk or partition on which the files/folders to which the link points is not mounted or has the wrong permissions.

I think you need to tell us in detail where the music files actually sit; we can then tell you how to mount that at boot with a line in fstab, how to ensure that you are the owner of that partition, and also what the command is to create a link from the Music folder on that to Music in your home.

[oldfred]

From my mount in /mnt/data, showing directory:

fred@z170-focal-k:~$ ll /mnt/data
total 80
drwxrwxrwx 17 fred fred  4096 Oct 19  2019 ./
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root  4096 Nov  4 12:23 ../
drwxrwxrwx 18 fred fred  4096 Dec 31  2015 Music/

Then once linked in /home it is seen in /home with l first showing it is linked.

fred@z170-focal-k:~$ ll *Mus*

lrwxrwxrwx 1 fred fred 15 Oct 14 19:37 Music -> /mnt/data/Music/

Mount in fstab, now since SSD, I use noatime, when HDD I used relatime.

# Entry for nvme0n1p5 : 
UUID=1a44f4af-6780-4bbd-ad0b-6385ed30830b /mnt/data ext4 noatime 0 2

[KieranFitzgerald]

Output from
cat /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=a143107f-f4be-478f-be5d-c5b45fd5a132 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=22abfa4b-52bd-4796-90bd-20963137b50d none swap sw 0 0
UUID=0c12fac5-49c1-443a-abf3-75cc931734d8 /mnt/Data ext4 auto,users,rw,relatime 0 2

[ajgreeny]

Sorry, I forgot to ask also for the output of commands

sudo blkid -c /dev/null

to check the UUIDs of partitions and then

mount | grep /dev

to see the mounted partitions status of your currently booted OS.

To check ownership of your data partition let's also see output from

ls -l /mnt/data/Music

I have a suspicion it may still be owned by root and if so you may need to run

sudo chown kieran:kieran /mnt/data/Music

to make you owner of the partition and thus able to write to it.

[oldfred]

Note that /mnt/Data is not equal to /mnt/data.
Make sure you adjust other commands to use Data, not data.
In Linux case is important, so you have to be consistent on what you capitalize.

[KieranFitzgerald]

sudo blkid -c /dev/null

/dev/sdb1: UUID="0c12fac5-49c1-443a-abf3-75cc931734d8" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="cc294478-01"
/dev/sda1: UUID="a143107f-f4be-478f-be5d-c5b45fd5a132" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="e1f2d99c-01"
/dev/sda5: UUID="22abfa4b-52bd-4796-90bd-20963137b50d" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="e1f2d99c-05"

mount | grep /dev

udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=4020304k,nr_inodes =1005076,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode =000)
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime,pagesize=2M)
/dev/sdb1 on /mnt/Data type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

ls -l /mnt/Data/Music

ls: cannot access '/mnt/Data/Music': No such file or directory

edit There is a directory in mnt (Computer) called Data but it's empty! mnt and Data ownership is root

[KieranFitzgerald]

I just tried this

ls -l /mnt/Data
total 16
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Nov 21 13:05 lost+found

sudo chown kieran:kieran /mnt/Data

ls -l /mnt/Data
total 16
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Nov 21 13:05 lost+found

Why is the ownership not changing?

[The Cog]

Why is the ownership not changing?

It probably is. You changed the ownership of /mnt/Data, and then listed its contents.
To view the ownershiip of /mnt/Data itself, you need to tell ls to show the directory rather than to show its contents:

ls -ld /mnt/Data

But there is no Music folder inside /mnt/Data. You will need to create that. You should be abe to now you own the Data folder.