Writing to fstab

[Paul Howarth]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 February 2006 10:56, Paul Howarth wrote:
> 
>>Anne Wilson wrote:
>>
>>>Something strange is happening in my attempts to write to fstab.  I have
>>>added, for instance,
>>>
>>>LABEL=/OldData
>>>/dev/hdb9               /mnt/data               ext3    users 1 2
>>>
>>>then umounted the manual mount of /mnt/data and run
>>>
>>>[root at david ~]# mount -a
>>>mount: mount point  does not exist
>>>
>>>However, the mount occurs and /mnt/data is readable in konqueror.
>>>
>>>Clearly there is some sort of problem, but what?
>>
>>There appears to be two lines:
>>
>>LABEL=/OldData
>>
>>This line does not have enough fields and is the one mount complains about.
>>
>>/dev/hdb9               /mnt/data               ext3    users 1 2
>>
>>This line has the right number of fields and hence works.
> 
> 
> Hi, Paul.  I copied from the existing entries, not realising that the display 
> had split the lines.  However, I not get 
> 
> [mntent]: line 9 in /etc/fstab is bad
> [mntent]: line 10 in /etc/fstab is bad
> [mntent]: line 11 in /etc/fstab is bad
> [mntent]: line 12 in /etc/fstab is bad
> 
> These are my entries:
> 
> LABEL=/OldData          /dev/hdb9               /mnt/data               ext3    
> users           1 2
> LABEL=/home_july05      /dev/hdb7               /mnt/home_july05        ext3    
> users           1 2
> LABEL=/mnt/home_dec05   /dev/hdb11              /mnt/home_dec05         ext3    
> users           1 2
> LABEL=OldVideo          /dev/hdb8               /mnt/video              ext3    
> users           1 2
> 
> In each case KWrite is highlighting the final parameter.  I know that these 
> parameters concern checking, but I don't much much else, so again I copied 
> from the existing /home line.
> 
> Advice, please?

The LABEL= syntax is an alternative to specifying the device/partition. 
So you'd use

LABEL=/OldData

*instead of*

/dev/hdb9

rather than in addition to it. The filesystem can be labelled using 
e2label. This syntax can help when actual device names are prone to 
changing (more often the case with SCSI drives than IDE ones).

You're probably better off just dispensing with the LABEL= field 
altogether in this case.

Paul.