How do I activate my sdb5 partition and have it stay active continually.

[Nils Kassube]

Steven Vollom wrote:
> > That's a good point. It depends on what you call "a problem" for
> > other mount points. If sda1 is mounted first, the new devices will be
> > mounted below /media on sda1. If sda1 is mounted later, those devices
> > which were mounted before sda1 are on /media on the root device
> > (sdb1). However these devices will not be visible any longer after
> > sda1 is mounted. This situation is certainly not wanted but the mount
> > operation wouldn't fail. Anyway, the only time the mount operation
> > would fail is when there is no appropriate directory for the new
> > device at mount time.
>
> I am unable to understand this part.  I will keep studying though.

OK, I'll try to explain:

According to your fstab you would mount sda1 to /media. Furthermore you 
have sda5 at /media/sda5, sda7 at /media/sda7 and sdb5 at /media/sdb5. 
However sda5 and sda7 would be mounted at startup while sda1 and sdb5 
would be mounted only manually on demand. So if you don't mount sda1 or 
sdb5 you could see /media/sda5 and /media/sda7. Now if you mount sda1 it 
would hide sda5 and sda7 because now only the directory structure of sda1 
can be seen below /media. That is a problem for you if you want to access 
the data on sda5 or sda7 but it is not a problem for the mount command.

From other posts I know that you have changed your fstab entry for sda1 
meanwhile, so it is no longer a problem to see your data on sda5 and sda7 
even if you mount sda1.


Nils