auto-mounting USB drives

[pkaplan1 at comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Mario Vukelic <mario.vukelic at dantian.org>
> On Fri, 2006-08-11 at 14:03 +0000, pkaplan1 at comcast.net wrote:
> 
> > Here's the relevant lines from /etc/fstab
> > 
> > /dev/sdb1 /media/hd1 vfat uid=1000,gid=1000,auto,rw,user 0 0
> > /dev/sdb2 /media/hd2 ext3 user,atime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 0
> > /dev/sdb3 /media/hd3 ext3 user,atime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 0
> 
> And that's the problem. USB mass devices should not be managed by adding
> entries in /etc/fstab. They are managed with udev/hal/pmount and can be
> configured in menu System > Preferences > Removable Drives and Media.
> (Access management via System > Administration > Users and Groups).
> 
> There are probably also conffiles in /etc/ for details, but I never had
> a need, so can't comment.
> 
I initially used udev solution, but I found that if I added other drives, as I ocasionally do (either harddrives or flash drives) there was no obvious consistency to which one got mounted in as /dev/sdb.  This causes problems with my backup script which writes to a fixed mountpoint.

I chose to use /etc/fstab entries since it fixed the mountpoints for the drive/partitions.  Any ideas on other ways to either force the specific drive to always mount at the same location even if other hardware is present?
Paul

Paul