Re: external USB hard drive—mounting, messing up boot

[Wade Preston Shearer]

> In the case of most distros, when a USB device is plugged in,  
> hotplug (or some alt) will automatically do some stuff.  From your  
> description, it sounds like it is auto creating the mount point (/ 
> media/<drive name>), and adding the details to the /etc/fstab.   
> This will allow you to mount it using the shortcut syntax.
>
> mount <drive name>
>
> The shortcut syntax works by looking up your parameter in the /etc/ 
> fstab for the rest of the details.  If it cannot find the <drive  
> name> then it will display an error.

Good assumption Lonnie; you were correct. I tried those shortcuts and  
they did work. This does appear to be the way that FC is handling  
things.

> About mounting on boot, I highly doubt it will.  Since it didn't  
> auto-mount the drive when you plugged it in (only set up the  
> details for you), it probably won't auto-mount at boot.  I would  
> suggest mounting the drive in your backup script, and unmounting it  
> at the end of the script.

Excellent suggestion. I had not thought of that. I just made the  
change. This will solve all of the booting issues.

> When you watch the boot up, does it appear to be booting directly  
> to the external drive, or booting into Grub (or lilo) first, then  
> booting the external drive.

It never actually booted from the external; just tried to. There is  
nothing on the external that it could use to boot.

> If BIOS is booting the external drive, you would usually find it in  
> the booting options. If Grub is booting the external drive, you  
> need to look at your grub configuration (/boot/grub/menu.lst usually)

The frustrating thing is that the/an external drive is not listed as  
an option in the BIO boot order. And, even if it was, the option to  
disable items does not exist; you can only change their priority.  
Very frustrating.


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