clean up fstab

[Trio3b]

mdv 2008.1 installed on 80 gb hda: It appears I've made a mess of fstab. Everything is working but I am trying to add an external HD (IDE 3.5 in a USB enclosure) and looking at fstab gives me cause for concern as explained in a sepaprate topic in hardware forums.

 

Approx 4 mos. after building this pc, decided to add another internal 80 gb HD on IDE1 slave position as a backup for hda. Not a clone, but just a place for users to have their own backup folder on a separate drive. I must have tried installing via MCC and mounted it at /storage when MCC asked for mount point. I then created two directories, user1 and user2 and set permissions so each user can only access his/her folder, then on each desktop created a link to each users backup folder on the /storage location (URL). This seems to have worked out for the past 6 mos.

 

 

Today upon viewing fstab to add an external drive I was surprised at this:

 

# Entry for /dev/hda1 :

UUID=6ec45ab5-4b17-4e5e-81d6-6cd4caf22b84 / ext3 relatime 1 1

# Entry for /dev/sda5 :

UUID=bde2240a-c04f-4eba-a83a-05f553522a71 /ext_user01 ext3 relatime 0 0

# Entry for /dev/sda1 :

UUID=7963c1c7-7e85-490b-8eac-afa4742ab4aa /ext_user02 ext3 relatime 0 0

# Entry for /dev/sda1 :

#LABEL=WD-320external /external ext3 defaults 0 0

# Entry for /dev/hdb1 :

#UUID=200e5a69-099c-4fb5-98d6-9c72a2d91f0c /backup ext3 defaults 1 2

# Entry for /dev/hdb5 :

#UUID=bd4b11b7-b34d-47af-85a2-9c3b2be84d70 /cache ext3 defaults 1 2

# Entry for /dev/hda6 :

UUID=5a211a14-e29e-4616-9c3f-39062081a788 /home ext3 relatime 1 2

/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0

none /proc proc defaults 0 0

none /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs auto,devmode=0666 0 0

# Entry for /dev/hdb1 :

#UUID=200e5a69-099c-4fb5-98d6-9c72a2d91f0c /media/hd ext3 defaults 0 0

# Entry for /dev/hdb5 :

#UUID=bd4b11b7-b34d-47af-85a2-9c3b2be84d70 /media/hd2 ext3 defaults 0 0

UUID=26980d91-2300-4653-a0ad-3482db8500f3 swap swap defaults 0 0

 

Somehow I must have bolloxed up the hdb install and commented it out then tried again with another method, but if you look, it appears that all hdb entries are commented out. It appears that the device partitions are the same UUID but are mounted in different locations. I did this using MCC. Maybe I should mkdir usbdisk in /mnt or /media

 

1. How is it that partitions are available if they are commented out?

 

2. How can I start to clean up fstab to be rid of unused partitions and how to figure which ones are necessary?

3. Yes there are sda1 (twice) and sda5 but that issue is in another thread.

 

Any help appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Trio3b]

Removed all references to /dev/sda in fstab to clean things up as I have disconnected the external drive for now. After futzing about on something else I come back to the desktop and here is fstab:

 

 

 

# Entry for /dev/hda1 :

UUID=6ec45ab5-4b17-4e5e-81d6-6cd4caf22b84 / ext3 relatime 1 1

# Entry for /dev/hdb1 :

#UUID=200e5a69-099c-4fb5-98d6-9c72a2d91f0c /backup ext3 defaults 1 2

# Entry for /dev/hdb5 :

#UUID=bd4b11b7-b34d-47af-85a2-9c3b2be84d70 /cache ext3 defaults 1 2

# Entry for /dev/hda6 :

UUID=5a211a14-e29e-4616-9c3f-39062081a788 /home ext3 relatime 1 2

/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0

none /proc proc defaults 0 0

none /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs auto,devmode=0666 0 0

# Entry for /dev/hdb1 :

UUID=6cada88c-a47c-492c-a036-64f0d22a226f /storage ext3 defaults 1 2

# Entry for /dev/hdb1 :

#UUID=200e5a69-099c-4fb5-98d6-9c72a2d91f0c /media/hd ext3 defaults 0 0

# Entry for /dev/hdb5 :

#UUID=bd4b11b7-b34d-47af-85a2-9c3b2be84d70 /media/hd2 ext3 defaults 0 0

UUID=26980d91-2300-4653-a0ad-3482db8500f3 swap swap defaults 0 0

 

I wondered why I was still able to access hdb when both partitions were commented out in fstab posted earlier. Now I see that a "new" entry has appeared in fstab compared to the original that I cut and paste directly from konsole in this thread and in my thread in hardware forum. Where did that line come from? That line was not there earlier! what the h*ll! No wonder hdb is working!

 

confused

 

Anyway, I would still like to clean up all those hdb partitions in fstab. we have starrted using hdb as backup so I would prefer not to have to start from scratch in adding hdb to fstab. Any ideas on which hdb entries can be deleted? I guess I could save this fstab as fstab.old and then write a new fstab removing all the hdb entries EXCEPT the one in orange and see if all is OK? Thoughts?

 

Thanks

Edited October 12, 2010 by Trio3b

[ianw1974]

You can still access them. If they are not uncommented in fstab, then they won't be mounted automatically. That is all. The system will still see any partitions on disks attached to the system. All /etc/fstab is doing is mounting them or not mounting them depending on the config.

 

As soon as you click a disk partition, the system will mount it. fstab also tells the system where to mount it, so if an fstab entry doesn't exist, then it will mount under /media usually. Otherwise, in fstab, you can specify, /mnt/whatever, or /iso or /data, depending on what you want mounted and where.

[Trio3b]

You can still access them. If they are not uncommented in fstab, then they won't be mounted automatically. That is all. The system will still see any partitions on disks attached to the system. All /etc/fstab is doing is mounting them or not mounting them depending on the config.

 

As soon as you click a disk partition, the system will mount it. fstab also tells the system where to mount it, so if an fstab entry doesn't exist, then it will mount under /media usually. Otherwise, in fstab, you can specify, /mnt/whatever, or /iso or /data, depending on what you want mounted and where.

 

It appears that I may have tried to experiment months ago with two partitions on hdb, one large for backup and one smaller for trying running Firefox cache into another disc but I guess I gave up on that and reformatted the disc into one partition and reinstalled with mount point under /storage.

 

Trying to do too many things at once.

 

Thanks for the help

Edited October 12, 2010 by Trio3b