How do I do it? (altering the mount points)

[Marius Gedminas]

On Thu, May 06, 2010 at 11:33:24PM +1000, Basil Chupin wrote:
> Earlier tonight as an experiment I installed XP and 10.04 on a set of 
> HDs and when installing 10.04 I deliberately made typo mistakes in the 
> partitioner.
> 
> For example, I put in /Windows/D as the mount point instead of using the 
> lower case /windows/D.
> 
> Of course, fstab now shows that this partition is mounted as /Windows/D, 
> and there is a corresponding entry in the file directory tree of Windows/D.
> 
> But what I want is to have this directory tree to show in local case - 
> windows/D - with fstab also showing 'windows' in lower case.
> 
> Using PartedMagic I went in and altered all the capitalised references 
> to Windows to lower case in fstab and the directory tree.
> 
> Then I tried to reboot the system - but it wouldn't.

(I would consider that a bug in Ubuntu: non-essential filesystems
prevent boot.)

> It doesn't boot because I think that the device map is now wrong and 
> with grub expecting to see Windows and not windows in fstab (I guess).

No; grub has nothing to do with it.

Ubuntu's startup jobs (specifically, mountall) want to mount all
filesystems mentioned in /etc/fstab before they let users log in.

> Fine, I thought, I will now change everything back, boot the system and 
> use the partitioner in 10.04 to rename the mounts, then run update-grub 
> and live happily ever after. Pigs will fly :-( .

update-grub is not necessary (but won't be harmful).

What do you mean when you say "the partitioner"?  System ->
Administration -> Disk tool?

> The partitioner has changed its clothes and now looks, or acts, nothing 
> like it did when the system was being installed - and the mount points 
> cannot be renamed. Not ever PartedMagic will do it for that matter.

I thought it worked the first time around?

> So, the question now is: how can I alter the mount points from Windows/D 
> etc to windows/D etc? Any ideas, please?

I can tell you how to do that from a terminal:

  sudo -s
  umount /Windows/D
    (repeat this for all mount points under /Windows)
    (if this fails, close all applications that are accessing data in
    that filesystem and try again)
  mv /Windows /windows
  gedit /etc/fstab
    (change /Windows to /windows everywhere)
  mount -a

I don't know if there are GUI tools that let you rename mountpoints.

> PS This "experiment" was deliberate in that I did make a typo when I 
> installed Ubuntu on my "main" system and typed the mount point for a 
> partition on the second drive where I store some data and backups as 
> /Data and not /data as intended; I would like to change it to the lower 
> case.

Marius Gedminas
-- 
Well, there's a quantum computer that can factor 15, so those of you using
4-bit RSA should worry.
        -- Bruce Schneier
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20100506/1688f3b9/attachment.sig>