How to mount USB drive at boot time

[Bill Davidsen]

Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-07-26 at 17:36 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>   
>> Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>>     
>>> I have a USB drive that is usually, though not always, connected to my
>>> desktop system.
>>>
>>>
>>> If it is connected to the system at boot time, the device path should be
>>> created and the drive should be mounted immediately, i.e. BEFORE any
>>> user logs in.
>>>
>>> If it is not connected at boot time, there should be no serious problem.
>>>
>>> If the drive is connected to a running system (on which it had not been
>>> previously connected), the device path should be created, and it should
>>> be mounted by root.
>>>
>>> Root should be able to unmount the drive, when it is mounted.
>>>
>>>
>>> I assume this should be done by either udev or hal -- HOW?
>>>
>>>       
>> You may be able to do this just by putting the entry in /etc/fstab, 
>> using the UUID of the filesystem to eliminate any dependency on device 
>> name. I /think/ the hotplug will check, I can't easily go thru it myself 
>> at this moment.
>>     
>
> I don't think so.  Here's my /etc/fstab:
>
> LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
> ...
> UUID=9dd976ce-a988-42a2-857d-06c3079675e7       /media/usb-disk ext3 defaults 1 2
>
>
> During boot I see these messages:
>
> Mounting local filesystems	[FAILED]
>
> ...
> Mounting other filesystems: mountpoint /media/usb-disk does not exist.
>
> And, in fact, the drive is not mounted.
>
> BTW: Why is this so hard?  Am I the only person who wants to do it?
>
> BTW: I thought that the messages that appear on the monitor during boot
> were saved in /var/log/messages .  Apparently not.  Are they saved
> anywhere?
>
> Thanks - jon
>
>
>   
I suspect the problem is that there is no directory called 
"/media/usb-disk" as those mount points in /media are generally created 
at run time, and these mounts happen early. I use directories in /mnt 
and descriptive names, so maybe create a directory called something like 
/mnt/usb1, change fstab, and then reboot or just try "mount -a" first.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
  CTO TMR Associates, Inc
  Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979