I *think* I understood what you wrote, but I'm a bit confused. All the
symlinking and stuff. Anyway, the way Mandrake "auto-mounts" it's HD's (at
least in 6.1, although I'm sure it's similar in 7.0) is it created several mount
directories (ie /mnt/DOS_sda5/) during installation and then at boot-up it'll
mount /dev/sda5 on /mnt/DOS_sda5. That way the newbie user doesn't have to deal
with mounting his harddrives, Mandrake does it for them.
I think maybe you got confused because my mount point for /dev/hdb5 is
/windows. I just created it there myself because of some small convinces,
mounting it in /mnt/hdb5 would mean an extra mouse click when looking for mp3's
with XMMS. And it's slightly less typing when I work at the console. But don't
worry, I know that most of the time mount points will be in /mnt and that's the
way a standard Mandrake install does it.
> Anthony Huereca wrote:
>
> > In /etc/fstab, add "umask=0" w/o quotes as one of the options at the end of hte
> > partition you want to be writable. Should be right after the other options.
> > Here's mine for instance:
> > /dev/hdb5 /windows vfat user,exec,nodev,nosuid,rw,conv=auto,umask=0 0 0
> >
> > And this is another thing Mandrake should do automatically. They mount it
> > automatically for you right now, so it probally wouldn't be that hard for them
> > to make it writable to everyone. Or maybe there's a good reason to leave it
> > defaulted as read only.
> >
>
> There's generally, as far as I'm aware, no reason to mount dos drives
> automatically. This should be a /mnt mount point and /mnt mount points aren't
> intended to be automatically mounted.
>
> On the other hand, I'm refering to automatically mounting during the boot process,
> instead of when the mount point is accessed later on.
>
> rw should make it writable. I'm not sure why umask=0 is needed, unless this is
> just because it's not ext2. rw, alone, makes ext2 filesystems writable.
>
> Filesystems which don't directly pertain to the actual Linux configuration you
> boot into should not be mounted during boot, unless you're dealing with networking
> (in which case I don't have enough knowledge to say one way or the other, except
> that in many a Unix environment, these are automounted only when a user tries to
> access them, instead of during the boot process).
>
> What I've read and helps to keep everything clearer is that what you create in /
> are symbolic links to the mount points in /mnt.
>
> E,g.,
>
> /c: => /mnt/c:
>
> By using ls -l or ls -F against /c: or even just /, the user sees /c: is a
> symbolic link to a /mnt mount point and can therefore immediately realize or
> assume that this is not mounted during the boot process.
>
> mount /mnt/c: - will "automatically" mount /mnt/c: according to the
> definition in the fstab file, if there's a definition for it there.
>
> If that's not done, a user does
>
> ls /mnt/c:
>
> and /mnt/c: is automatically mounted, then this is automounting as is often known
> in Unix.
>
> Then, /c: is accessible, in all of these cases.
>
> I'm not sure what form of automatic mounting people are referring to, here,
> because automatic applies in all three cases, in different ways. In Solaris,
> automounting "foreign" filesystems refers to the latter meaning, as far as I'm
> aware, but because this is a newbie list, people could mean something different.
> Even in the expert mailing list, people could mean any of these three
> possibilities.
>
> "Automatic" is a fairly general concept and context usually helps to clarify the
> meaning. Explicit explanation always clarifies the meaning.
>
> So, which are you people usually referring to?
>
> The general recommendation of placing any filesystems which aren't mounted during
> the boot process in /mnt is a good idea, because it keeps a system configuration
> more immediately understandable. Mount points can be placed almost anywhere, even
> buried n directories deep; however, to become accustomed to creating
> configurations according to more general or "standard" guidelines, it's good to
> follow these.
>
> Create mount points in /mnt and symbolic links to these in /, or your home
> directory (/ is better, because in / these are accessible by everyone who has the
> privileges to use these). It's a little extra overhead in setting up, but when
> doing ls -F on /, for example, it's immediately evident that /cdrom, /a:, /floppy,
> /c:, /d:, etcetera, are symlinks to /mnt mount points.
>
> Mounting can't be done using these, because they're symlinks, but mounting is done
> relatively infrequently, while access is done much more often; therefore, the
> extra typing of /mnt for mounting and umounting is insignificant.
>
> Mandrake may have made / the location of these mount points, but this renders the
> system a little less immediately understandable, because any actual directory
> hard links in /, should be part of the main configuration. cdrom, dos partitions,
> and floppies aren't always in use and don't really make up part of the principal
> Linux configuration. These are "add-ons", whereas /boot, /var, /home, /usr, /tmp
> are not conceivable as "add-ons".
>
> That's the "religious" point of view, but most systems probably do it this way,
> for this kind of reasoning. You'll find the same kind of explanation in LDP and
> other documentation, as well as books. On many Unix systems, you'll find such
> mount points in other locations, such as under some /usr directory.
>
> Sometimes vendors may choose to change the more standard ways, but this can
> potentially cause problems over the long term, as you switch from one environment
> to another. By adhering to "convention", this kind of problem is avoided. Also,
> not all programs accept symbolic links, as far as I'm aware (ran into one or two
> about a week ago). /mnt should not contain symbolic links, at least none used by
> programs, but / will on "conventional" Linux systems, where as not on others;
> therefore, some programs may need additional coding to check for symlinks and to
> follow these until they get to the actual mount points, in cases where symlinks
> would cause programs to fail, which can happen.
>
> Hence, "convention" isn't always bad. Straying from it may appear more conducive
> to user friendliness or ease of use, but can potentially cause problems.
>
> Conclusion, I reiterate that mount point should be placed under /mnt, which is why
> /mnt is there. For user friendliness, add symlinks in /, but mount and umount via
> /mnt.
>
> If there's any good reasoning otherwise, then I'ld be interested in reading it.
> I'm trying to coax newbies along the more conventional path, but maybe there are
> reasons not to.
>
> mike
>
>
>
> > > another stumper for me?
> > >
> > > I just wanted to make a new directory on the DOS partition that I could
> > > put some WP8 files in (because the apostrophe comes out on the printer
> > > as something stupid in Linux right now) and it said I didn't have
> > > permission. I checked the "fstab" and hda1 includes "user" in
> > > permissions. I checked properties by right-clicking on the icon and it
> > > includes user, group and others for both read and write.
> > >
> > > OK, so I made the directory as super-user, gave it "a+rwx" permissions,
> > > and still couldn't save a file in it. Access denied. No permission to
> > > write or what ever....
> > >
> > > Again, what am I missing here?
> > >
> > > Bob
> > --
> > Anthony Huereca
> > http://m3000.1wh.com
> > Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
--
Anthony Huereca
http://m3000.1wh.com
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
