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
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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.

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