FSTAB-Tuning

Not a must but you get a good intro if you read the manpages:

> man fstab

> man mount

Also, there is a very good site that covers the complete NTFS-problem and - in addition - it explains thoroughly a lot of things about mounting and the fstab FAQ. Most of the information here I took from there! The complete link is given in the NTFS-Access part! For a start you may want to take a look at http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfs.html#4.9

Things to know for now:

You can always mount a disk or floppydrive or any other blockdevice even if it's not mentioned in the /etc/fstab (=FileSystemTABle).
A so called mountpoint (i.e. any directory of your choice) has to exist. When being used this way its content is covered (i.e. you can't see or use it) until you unmount the device again!
You access a partition simply by opening that directory in a filebrowser.
A mountpoint can easily be changed if you don't like its position any more for any reason. In case you have created symbolic links pointing to some directory inside, they will be broken, of course. Delete them and create new ones:

> ln -s /new/location/of/your/disk /your/link/to/it

Of course you can also do this with a graphical browser of your choice like nautilus...

In any case you should provide some information about what kind of filesystem you want to mount (in order to assure that Linux loads the right modules) and about its properties and Permissions
That means applying UNIX-permissions: tell Linux

who's the owner of the device
what the groupID is and
who is allowed to do what on the filesystem: that is to define filepermissions!

As you might know, the permissions are three binary triples.(each like 2² 2¹ 2⁰ , the potencies representing Read, Write and Execute);
The first triple is for Owner, the second for Group and the last for Others.
They can also be displayed in decimals (thus ranging from 0 to 7: 2² +2¹ +2⁰).

Manual mounting

Enter a line like this:

> mount /dev/hda7 /mnt/data -t vfat users,umask=0007,gid=users 0 0

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Automated mounting

In order to automate the mounting or simply to type less like just providing the mountpoint: (like > mount /mnt/data) you should store information about devices in the file /etc/fstab.

If you have provided mountpoints for your WindowsPartitions during the installation (which is not possible for NTFS-drives because RedHat does not ship any driver...) there will already be matching lines.

They have to be edited, because the default settings used by RedHat only apply to ext2- or ext3-Linux-filesystems and are NOT good for use with FAT32.

Getting to the point

The fstab is interpreted linewise. The entries are separated by spaces or (to improve readability) tabs.

/dev/hda7 /mnt/data vfat auto,users,umask=0007,gid=users 0 0

This is how I mount my Windows FAT32-partition that I need to have access to files used both with Linux and Windows.

The first entry is the device-file, the second the all important mountpoint, the third the filesystem-type, and the forth are the mount options. And that is where you can do wrong or good...

I chose auto for automatic mounting at bootup. Practical if no changes of permissions or stuff during use are planned. If so be informed that it'll be hard to unmount the disk! The changes you make to your fstab will only take effect after reboot...
The users-entry means that all users are allowed to mount and unmount the drive. Normally that is not needed because with the auto-option it is already mounted. I left it mainly because with that option the Gnome-desktop automatically displays an icon for the device on the desktop! (B.t.w.: The difference between user and users is that without the s only the user who mounted can unmount again. With users any user can mount and unmount!)
The umask is a little tricky to understand. In a nutshell it's simply the opposite of the system mentioned above with a leading 0: umask=0000 means everybody can do everything with the files on the disk - this may not always be desired! umask=0007 then gives the Owner and the Groupmembers (i.e. the first two triples) all permissions and denies them to everybody else as for example to a nobody-user who accesses the disk via your SAMBA-server. See the SAMBA-Guide-part for that topic. If you want to give those guest accounts at least Read-Access, then choose umask=0003, which corresponds to a 774-file-permission!
Last not least I specified a GroupID gid=users. This is simply because the automounting option leads to a root-ownership and to a root-group. Make sure you give your normal accounts the users-groupID for their primary group. When created at installation time, RedHat gives no possibility to change the group and defines a private group for each user... in SystemsSettings -> Users and Groups you can correct that!
Don't worry about the two zeros at the end; no idea what they are for...

/dev/hda1 /mnt/system ntfs noauto,ro,umask=0227,gid=users 0 0

This is what I use for my NTFS-Windows-drive. Because of the noauto I have to mount it when I need it, and because of the missing users-entry I have to do that as root:

> su -

> mount /mnt/system

You can also view or download my complete fstab - but make sure you only paste entries (because ownership and permissions may not be secure/correct due to the webpublishing!) and adapt the device-files to your situation if necessary (/dev/hdax for IDE-devices or /dev/sdax for SCSI-devices)!

/etc/fstab

Legal:
Permission to copy, distribute, link, and reformat is given and desired on condition that authorship is indicated:
Daniel Mader, Freiburg i.Brsg., 2003

Last changed: 16.06.2003