Re: [PLUG] Adding new drives to fstab

[Art Alexion <art.alexion@verizon.net>]

On Tuesday 18 December 2007 18:47:01 Stephen Gran wrote:
> > I need help with two things:
> >
> >         1. how to detect which drive is on which /dev device
> >         2. how to edit fstab to mount them.
>
> So, to be more concrete, you can prod around in /sys/block to look at
> drive characteristics if you just want information like 'which drive is
> the seagate one?'  I would advise writing udev rules for removable file
> systems, and then mount based on the symlink.  For permanent file
> systems, use the uuid thing if you've already started on it.  It's on
> eof the more reliable ones.

Thanks to both Stephen and Matt for pointing me to the command line tools that 
made it easier to get this done..  I finally set it up.  Special thanks to 
Stephen for the explanation as to why all of this is necessary.

In the process, I also learned that kcontrol has a graphical tool that does 
this.  It's nice because it identifies the drives by size and manufacturer.  
It lets you write to /etc/fstab and also mount or unmount dirves.  
Unfortunately, it writes a clunky fstab.  I found it better to do it by hand 
and use comments to identify the hardware.

One last question.  This is not so much to get it to work so much as the best 
practice as it may affect programs such as kscd and k3b.

Right now, I have not identified the two DVD writers in fstab.  hal/udev 
identifies them and places them on the desktop if there is media in them.  If 
I mount, they are mounted to /media/[cd/dvd label].  For instance, if I put 
in the Turbo Tax CD, with the label "Turbo Tax 2006", it mounts it 
as /media/Turbo\ Tax\ 2006

Should I put entries for them in /etc/fstab instead, and with 2 devices, what 
should I mount them on?  That is, can I rename the default /media/cdrom0 and 
its symlink /media/cdrom to, say /media/dvd0 with a symlink /media/Memorex 
and /media/dvd1 with a symlink /media/Samsung?  Does it make a difference 
that the Samsung is SATA and the Memorex is IDE?  Or should I just let hal 
handle it?

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