Why is mounting a USB disk in a usable manner so difficult?

[Liam Proven]

On 16 December 2013 18:45, J <dreadpiratejeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How the heck do I fix this so that my external hard drives are mounted
> in a way that I can actually use them?
>
> Why do we make it so bloody difficult to actually plug a drive in and use it?

It *is* difficult, I agree. Sadly, the flipside of Unix' better
security than Windows is that sometimes it gets in the way.

To mount my drives permanently, I recently discovered a handy file
called /etc/mtab

It's a counterpart to /etc/fstab which is the one that describes where
stuff *should be* mounted. The mtab file describes where it *is
currently* mounted.

I have spent ages trying to write /etc/fstab lines that will allow me
to mount my own drives and have RW access to them without using
superuser powers -- the way they're mounted if I connect them when the
system is already running. I never got it right.

But what I found that I could do was:

* insert the drive
* make a note of where Ubuntu mounted it
* copy the line from /etc/mtab describing that mount
* paste it into /etc/fstab
* unmount / eject the drive
* manually create the mount point

Shut down, connect drive, reboot, & the drive was then automatically
mounted in the right place, with the right permissions.

*Far* easier than trying to work out the right parameters and switches
for fstab, which I have been fighting since about 1989.

Also, note that the drive might end up belonging to the user who
formatted it. Try formatting it from the Disks program, or right from
the Launcher, and then you should be the owner.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
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