[GRLUG] fstab query

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Tue, 2013-11-12 at 12:57 -0500, Eric Beversluis wrote:
> We are trying to insert a line into fstab on a ClearOS (based on CentOS)
> server to mount an ioSafe on reboot. Something doesn't seem to be
> working right. The first time we rebooted after inserting the line (see
> below) into fstab, it crashed. We removed the line from fstab and
> manually mounted the ioSafe. Another time we tried again; this time it
> seemed to boot ok but the ioSafe did not mount.
> 
> Are we going about this right?
> We formated the ioSafe this way (retaining the GPT partition table):
> Num Start  End    Size   File sys Name                         Flags
> 1   17.4kB 134MB  134MB           Microsoft reserved partition msftres
> 2   135MB  4001GB 4001GB ext4     Basic data partition
> 
> (Research seemed to suggest it best to leave the MS reserved partition.)
> 
> The fstab line we entered was this:
> UUID=dd06173e-9fb2-47f8-8841-5ed96e4d4ee4 /mnt/ioSafe ext4
> defaults,nofail 0 0
> (The first time we set the <pass> value to 2.)

Mounting USB devices at boot time is a dicey business;  the USB bus may
not be initialized, or at least not settled, when booting gets around to
mounting filesystem.  Sp sometimes it may work and other times it will
not.

One trick is to create the fstab with ""noauto", then you can still
mount it with "mount" but it will not be mounted at boot time.  Then
just put the mount in the service start-up of whatever requires the
drive to be attached.

Or use automount to control the mounting of the device.

> It has been suggested that the reason this fstab entry doesn't work is
> that the first partition does not have the ext4 file system.