31 Aug
2021
31 Aug
'21
5 p.m.
On Tuesday 31 August 2021 02:04:31 Thierry de Coulon wrote:
I doubt there is a way to make a difference between an
fstab
mounted "removable media" and a dynamicaly mounted one?
Thierry
First of all, I am running a desktop computer, not (as it seems) a laptop like
yourself, so I have a different situation. And I use a kind of hodgepodge of
different methods, to be sure that I can mount an external device whenever I
want.
Somehow, unaccountably, a device that would mount automatically yesterday
won't mount today, and this nearly always happens at the least convenient
time, so I want something that will work NOW without a lot of fuss. This
happens most often with flash drives and SD cards, though. My external drives
usually are reliable, and mount without too much fuss.
For the most part, however, I solve the problem by creating custom mount
points, with special user-friendly, human-readable names.
examples:
/media/Fred
~ or ~
/media/<USER>/wd-1tb_mybook
etc., etc.
You can name these special mount points like they were dogs, if you want, or
get more creative, or give them boring technical-sounding names -- whatever.
I put these mount points in fstab along with the other relevant lines, then I
save my fstab file somewhere safe. Next time I must reinstall my system, I
just copy the fstab file from my safe place, and overwrite the original. (I
keep a copy of original settings, just in case.)
This takes care of most mounting issues. When SD cards or flash drives
suddenly stop mounting like usual, I create a mount point using mkdir:
/mnt/SD
then use this mount command:
sudo mount -t exfat /dev/sde1 /mnt/SD
[sda1 > sdd1 are internal drives; sde1 is my first external mount point]
and that usually does it. But I only mount an SD card in order to transfer
files so that I can listen to music on my smartphone, or some such. I don't
use an SD for actual storage, as one might with a laptop.
The only problem is when I want to mount BOTH my external hard drives AND my
SD cards or flash drives. Then that mount point gets moved around, and sde1
may need to be changed to something else.
I have a couple other tricks, too, but I haven't needed them much since
upgrading to Devuan Beowulf.
This ought to provide either a permanent solution (custom mount points in
fstab) or at least a dependable workaround (mkdir /mnt/SD). Also the problem
with mounting an SD card might be solved by formatting the SD card with a
Linux file system like ext3 or ext4 -- I don't even know if that's
possible! -- but then it would not be readable for my smartphone, so I
haven't tried.
I hope that helps.
Bill