changing mount point

[Andrew Farris]

On Thu, 2009-12-03 at 14:00 -0500, Gary Kirkpatrick wrote:
> I have my data on a partition, sda2.  9.04 is on sda4.  When I go to
> sda2 I have to click home, then main before I can get to my data
> files.  Is there a way to avoid a step or two, going straight to where
> the data is stored?  I think this has something to do with mounting
> but could not tell for sure from the posts I read.  

To change the location of where a partition is mounted/automonted, you
would need to add an appropriate line to your /etc/fstab file... see
this link for an excellent walk-through on what's involved:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticallyMountPartitions

There's lots of other options for doing this though... Preston covered
the making of symlinks to the appropriate places in his replies, I'll
share with you some of what I have on my setup, in the hopes that it may
be useful to you.

My setup: 
I have 2 partitions where my data is split up other than my home
folder... mainly because I like to keep my data segregated, but I still
have some mechanisms by which I can easily/conveniently access
everything:
     1. Symlinks:
                I have symlinks in most of my main folders (Documents,
                Music, Pictures, etc...) that lead off to other folders
                on my system... namely to old windows document folders
                where I never migrated my things away from... I also
                have a symlink off to my big hard drive for Wine's
                Program Files folder, because it gets pretty big from
                installing games
     2. Bookmarks:
                Nautilus Bookmarks are your friend. You can put links to
                big generic folders you access a lot there, so they're
                just a click away. To organize them, open a file browser
                window, and go to the "Bookmarks" menu. Either that, or
                just browse to the folder, then drag/drop into the
                bottom part of the 'Places' view from nautilus... these
                folders will then be available from there with 1-click
                access, and also from "Places > [Your-Location]", or
                from "Places > Bookmarks > [Your-location]" depending on
                how many bookmarks you have.
     3. Panel Applets:
                You can also use panel applets to manage folders you
                frequent, and even documents in some cases... some of my
                favorites(all available from repositories):
              * Top-Shelf-
                        Nice little applet for compactly managing
                        documents, folders, etc that you use often, but
                        don't want in your bookmarks, or on your desktop
                        for whatever reason. 
              * file-browser-applet-
                        Similar to the way the ubuntu menu bar works,
                        the file-browser-applet is a panel applet that
                        allows you to apply the same idea to any folder
                        on your system. Basically, you add the app to
                        your panel then "right-click > Preferences" and
                        add folders to it, and it shows them all on your
                        panel like the menubar. This makes for quick,
                        single click access to entire directory trees...
                        the only complaint i've found is for very large
                        directories it sometimes opens/navigates slowly,
                        and it doesn't hide files defined in a .hidden
                        file... but other than that, i love it.
              * Drawers-
                        Drawers are available by default on ubuntu, and
                        basically act like panel space that collapses to
                        a single icon. Similar in idea to topshelf, but
                        somewhat more limited imho.
              * quick-lounge-applet-
                        This applet is also similar to top-shelf, but
                        you don't have to click it to view the
                        applets...it just keeps them in little rows on
                        your panel, similar to the workspace switcher.
                        this is generally more useful for applications,
                        but you can put folders there too.

I hope that helps you out some... good luck!

-- 
Andrew
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