/etc/fstab: When I swap around my USB stuff it gets mounted wrongly.

[Toby Newman]

I have set up some entries in my fstab to tell it where to mount my
various USB mass storage devices:

My 3 USB Devices:
ipod nano
SD Card via card reader
CompactFlash card via digital camera

Some of the relevant lines in my /etc/fstab:

/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 vfat users,uid=xxxxxx,gid=xxxxxx,noauto,umask=000 0 0
/dev/sda2 /media/ipod vfat users,uid=xxxxxx,gid=xxxxxx,noauto,umask=000 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 vfat users,uid=xxxxxx,gid=xxxxxx,noauto,umask=000 0 0

....and so on.

The problem I have is that if I shuffle around the USB ports that these
get connected to they show up as different /dev/sd* devices.

One day, my ipod will show up as /dev/sda1. The next day, because I will
have my SD card connected too, my ipod will show up as /dev/sdb2.

Am I missing a feature here, somewhere? How can I have my fstab know
which device is connected and mount it to the correct place?

--
-Toby, who...
Add the word afiduluminag to the subject
field to circumvent my email filters.
Ignore any mail delivery error.

[User]

Toby Newman wrote:

> I have set up some entries in my fstab to tell it where to mount my
> various USB mass storage devices:
>
> My 3 USB Devices:
> ipod nano
> SD Card via card reader
> CompactFlash card via digital camera
>
> Some of the relevant lines in my /etc/fstab:
>
> /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 vfat users,uid=xxxxxx,gid=xxxxxx,noauto,umask=000 0 0
> /dev/sda2 /media/ipod vfat users,uid=xxxxxx,gid=xxxxxx,noauto,umask=000 0 0
> /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 vfat users,uid=xxxxxx,gid=xxxxxx,noauto,umask=000 0 0
>
> ...and so on.
>
> The problem I have is that if I shuffle around the USB ports that these
> get connected to they show up as different /dev/sd* devices.
>
> One day, my ipod will show up as /dev/sda1. The next day, because I will
> have my SD card connected too, my ipod will show up as /dev/sdb2.
>
> Am I missing a feature here, somewhere? How can I have my fstab know
> which device is connected and mount it to the correct place?
>

I have the same problem, my mp3's are on a usb hd and when I reboot the
mount changes, sda5 or sdb5, or sdc5, poor amarok can't find the 6700
songs so I need to rescan the collection. How do I fix the mount point?
I'm a linoob so be gentle. Kinda proud of myself though, in 3 days in my
free time I've become 'almost' MSfree, I've setup my minolta qms 2300dl
network printer, got my scanner working with sane, got dvdshrink working
with wine, mp3 support, dvd support, etc., etc., Kubuntu Dapper rocks!

[Call Me Ishmael]

In data Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:30:07 +0100, Toby Newman ha scritto: (wrote:)

>
> One day, my ipod will show up as /dev/sda1. The next day, because I will
> have my SD card connected too, my ipod will show up as /dev/sdb2.
>
> Am I missing a feature here, somewhere? How can I have my fstab know
> which device is connected and mount it to the correct place?

No, you aren't missing anything, this is the way things go as default :-)
But there's a (quite) easy way to "link" a given hardware device (e.g.
Ipod, or Card reader), to a specific /dev/ entry.
E.g: the ipod will always be /dev/ipod, the card reader could be
/dev/cardreader and so on. Of course you could use any different name.

To achieve this, please read
[url]http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html[/url]

It could seem very complicated at first glance, but once you have
understood what you have to do, it will take no more than few minutes to be
ready.
Ubuntu comes with udev already installed, so you do not have to do anything
else to add a new udev rule.
As far as I remember, once you wrote the udev rule, you don't have the
device automounted, you have to do it manually.
eg. mount /dev/ipod /media/ipod

[Hadron Quark]

"Call"posted on 2006-04-19:

> In data Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:30:07 +0100, Toby Newman ha scritto: (wrote:)
>
>

>>
>> One day, my ipod will show up as /dev/sda1. The next day, because I will
>> have my SD card connected too, my ipod will show up as /dev/sdb2.
>>
>> Am I missing a feature here, somewhere? How can I have my fstab know
>> which device is connected and mount it to the correct place?

>
>
> No, you aren't missing anything, this is the way things go as default :-)
> But there's a (quite) easy way to "link" a given hardware device (e.g.
> Ipod, or Card reader), to a specific /dev/ entry.
> E.g: the ipod will always be /dev/ipod, the card reader could be
> /dev/cardreader and so on. Of course you could use any different name.
>
> To achieve this, please read
> [url]http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html[/url]

Crikey : if anything needed a frontend then that is it. Hard to
believe it is so complicated to achieve something so desirable :(