Question

2

Bad fstab, can't seem to fix

rated 0 times [ 2] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 2877 / 2 Years ago, sat, may 28, 2022, 1:14:56

edit: Another thing that compounded/compounds the problem is that pysdm lets you add spaces in drive mount points, which I am pretty sure are not supported.

edit: So. I downloaded a program that is supposed to auto-configure NTFS programs, and it seems to have automatically put in those UUIDs for me! The problem is that I now seem to have two entries for each drive, and it's rather cluttered. (See below)

sorry to be another one of those annoying people posting fstabs left and right and saying, "Help me!" But I'm really stumped.

So I was using pysdm (the GUI frontend is "Storage Device manager") and I realised something awful. It works fine to set new partition entries, but it won't change existing entries, only add new ones. That means that if I want to change the mounted name of sda6 from A to B it makes an entirely new entry!!!

So anyways, I went and cleaned out my fstab, with one entry for each partition and the proper options (the NTFS stuff, file permissions). It still asks me what to do (skip, retry, panic, manual, whatever) once during startup - apparently it's looking for another partition that's already mounted or doesn't exist.

Could the problem be something to do with my mtab? I have no clue; I only got into Linux like 6 months ago.

What my hard drive looks like

My 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).

#

#

#

# / was on /dev/sda8 during installation

# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation

# <file system>                             <mount point>   <type>  <options>                  <dump>  <pass>

UUID=efc87ac0-daac-4a32-9a85-ea57beff0e28  /                  ext4  defaults                        0  1 

proc                                       /proc              proc  nodev,noexec,nosuid             0  0 

/dev/sda6                                  /media/Swap        swap  sw                              0  0

/dev/sda1                                  /media/Windows 7   ntfs  nls=iso8859-1,users,noauto      0  0 

/dev/sda2                                  /media/Boot        ext2  users,noauto                    0  0 

/dev/sda3                                  /media/Acer        ntfs  nls=iso8859-1,users,noauto      0  0 

/dev/sda5                                  /media/Windows #2  ntfs  nls=iso8859-1,users,noauto      0  0 

/dev/sda7                                  /media/Fedora      ext4  users,noauto                    0  0 

/dev/sda9                                  /media/Storage     ext4  users                           0  0

Regarding the new config:

I now, unfortunately, get this:

strange naulitus panel

Also, whenever I try to mount a NTFS partition not as root, I get this:

NTFS permissions

My new fstab, for whatever reason, doesn't seem to want to stay in blockquote without becoming headers and such, so it put it here.

Answers

Only authorized users can answer the question. Please sign in first, or register a free account.

giccolla

Add To Favorites

Follow

Total Points: 161

Total Questions: 124

Total Answers: 117

Location: Aland Islands

Member since Wed, Nov 17, 2021

3 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago bjecterless · Accepted Answer

The best way I know to troubleshoot problems with fstab is to use sudo mount -a from a terminal to see where the problems are, and interactively make changes until the errors are fixed.

mount -a simply mounts everything in your fstab. If certain entries mount without error, but give access problems, you might want to unmount, make edits to fstab, then run mount -a.

Using UUIDs makes the file easier to maintain, but don't get too distracted by all the people talking like it's an immediate requirement. For right now, it may be simpler to use the devices if you're willing to maintain the file whenever you make changes. Even though UUIDs make it easier to maintain, it's not an immediate requirement to fix problems, in my opinion. One problem at a time!

More on UUIDs

Once you get everything working, here's how to switch to UUIDs, and maintain them in the future.

The original fstab has a comment at the top, but here are some more details and tips: in the terminal, enter the command sudo blkid -c /dev/null. I add this as a comment at the top of fstab so it's easy to remember. The '-c' switch just makes it reread the information instead of using a cached copy, to make sure it's up-to-date. Unless you have a lot of partitions, it won't make any difference in time.

The result of this command is a list of all partitions, by device, with label, UUID, and type of filesystem. You can cut and paste the UUID into your fstab file, replacing the /dev/sdx notation with UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxxxxxxx /mountpoint ... Once you get used to it, it really isn't much trouble to maintain the UUIDs. I'd suggest leaving a comment above the line with the old notation, although remember to update it if it changes.