[EdLUG] mounting name adjustment

Tue May 24 12:38:14 UTC 2016

Hello Dee

Welcome to the list Across the Sea!

That's quite a few questions there and I'm not sure I follow you entirely
(a little confused how you use some terminology).... so please bear with me

I think I made an error forgetting to make the mount point
> for /arch /media/(user) and putting it instead into /mnt/.
>

I'd normally expect to identify partitions referring specifically

   - to their "device file" name ("/dev/sda1" ; "/dev/sdb3" , etc)
   - and their "mount points" (as in, the explicitly named mounted location
   of a partition) with the notation "/archive" , "/media/$USER/mountpoint"
   etc.

Keeping the two concepts separate helps when talking about them.

It also seems that you are doing the setup through a disk utility GUI --
not sure what the program is, so my notes will involve the command line.
You have not indicated whether you are comfortable on that front.

*To your specific points*

Documentation in general - *The Linux Documentation Project* (TLDP) is
fairly distro-agnostic, so should be a decent starting point
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/index.html . Note that some commands are
installed by default on some distros, and not on others. The notes below
apply to the Ubuntu family (of which Linux Mint is a part of)

Any guides by *DigitalOcean* should be sufficiently easy (Googling many
topics about Linux often leads toa DO guide in the top rankings); and any *Arch
Linux wiki* page should be sufficiently detailed (though you may need to
substitute some information there that's Arch specific for the Ubuntu
equivalent).

Use *Google* (or *DuckDuckGo.com *) to find more answers.

1) Can anyone tell me about changing and/or editing mount points.
> Is it safe to do so, is there any documentation about this.
>

A partition is a portion of disk, as you already know. It in itself is
agnostic as to where it is mounted. It looks like your archive is on
*/dev/sda7*

A mountpoint is a directory in the filesystem tree, nothing more. You want
your archive on */arch* , but you currently have it on */media/arch* (which
is not what you wanted)

It's a matter of unmounting from /media/arch and mounting /arch

sudo umount /media/arch
sudo mount /dev/sda7 /arch

So **in principle** yes it's safe -- but your applications need to be told!

If you are currently moving files from */home/user/blah* to */media/arch*
only by hand, then just change the mount point and adapt your workflow
accordingly.

If you have applications pointing currently to */media/arch* you will need
to remember to have them point to */arch* once you make the change.

Documentation - I recommend checking TLDP
http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/sect_03_01.html

2) I am also looking for the rules or options of how to edit mount
> options in the Disks utility. If I alter one field it seems to want
> to change other fields in the edit mount options settings.
>

I cannot comment for the Disk utility app.

In a *command line* for Ubuntu and Mint systems, you would first identify
the disks, and the the disk's UUID, and if they are already mounted you can
see the filesystem -- type:

sudo lsblk
sudo blkid
df -T

lsblk lists block devices (storage). blkid gives you block devices' IDs

The df command shows you disks, where they're mounted and extra info. The
-T option makes it show filesystem type (ext4, ext4, fat32, etc)

You can then edit fstab

sudo vim /etc/fstab

The format should be documented in the file

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>

Set the first item to the UUID of your partition, the second to where you
want it (/arch), the third to the filesystem type (from df -T)

The next should be options - set to "default,rw" (no spaces) and the last
two to 0 and 2 respectively. The final "2" causes a filesystem check at
every boot. I don't see it is necessary (most have this set to 0) but if
you are particularly paranoid about bad blocks you can use this. Note that
it will slow your boot time down massively.

3) Can you suggest any other related and useful documentation to
> these mounting issues.
>

As noted above, DigitalOcean, TLDP, and the Arch Linux Wiki do fairly solid
guides (listed there in order of typical ease to read).

4) With other operating systems partitioning a drive often speeds up
> the partition one is logged into. Splitting a drive C: to equal C:,
> D: and E: makes working in each about 3 times faster.
> Also there were less bad sector errors, often none on the partition
> closest to the hub. Are there related benefits with Linux parts.
>

Not knowing what you are comparing to, I cannot say for sure. Also file
system features is not my forte ; I just normally roll with ext4 for
everything, except the /boot partiton whic is geenrally ext2, and any flash
drive I need to share with a Windows or Mac user I format to FAT32 (....
:-/   ....)

For speed I have wondered if multi-paritioning really does make a
difference. I cannot say, but the rule of thumb "3 partitions, 3 times
faster" does not hold water in my mind (I don't normally hold water in
there, mind). Have a read of
http://partition.radified.com/partitioning_2.htm . I would urge to
partition for segregation of data, rather than for alleged "speed" which I
don't think is relevant in this day and age. You certainly want to keep
your partition mounted at */home*  to be separate from the one used for */*
, and on a server it's also a good idea to split off */var* too.

The speed "increase" certainly does not apply to SSDs, though I am told
turning off journaling for ext3/ext4 on a SSD improves performance
(journaling allows error recovery on write errors, say after power outage,
or random disconnect). For the use case you seem to describe (unless you're
doing heavy data processing of massive data - scientific crunching or AV
remuxing), you should not see a difference.

For reliability, *ext3* and *ext4* filesystems try to mitigate errors
themselves - certainly I have not heard of any bad-blocks problems in years
that weren't cause by doing something horrible like unplugging drives
whilst in use (that case is mostly mitigated by the journaling feature) or
just general drive failure because of extended use/old hardware... tbh I
have not heard of bad blocks being an issue in day-to-day operation since
the days of Windows pre-XP ; seldom ever had it in Mac OS out of the box,
and I suspect there is no cause for concern on today's ext3/4 filesystems.

Notes about fstab and file system checks apply here. As said, the file
system itself should take care of the day-to-day considerations.

For documentation see TLDP http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/filesystems.html

And Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2 ; click through to the
articles on *ext3* and *ext4*

You can find extra information by Googling
*"linux file systems"*

I have been able to learn some things about editing /etc/fstab
> and prefer to use the UUID to identify the drives and partitions.
>

Good choice

I also have used sudo chmod a+w /partition-name to check that the
> partition settings are as I require them.
>

I think you mean `chmod u+w /$MOUNTPOINT -R` ? Changing the permissions on
the device file is not recommended. Also use *u+w* instead of *a+w* so that
only you can read and write on that partition, rather than opening it up to
all users of the computer!

To affect newly created files, you will need to set your *umask*.

Otherwise, I do that too on new hard drives (/dev/sda* partitions are
usually system-reserved so I just leave for root).

I hope that's of use.

Final question - what prompted you to contact EdLUG specifically? Just
curious, always wanting to know how people find us!

Tai

===
Tai Kedzierski

Affordable Office IT for Freelance and Startup Businesses
http://helpuse.com/

  I use www.libreoffice.org

*Open Source Free Software is a matter of liberty, not price.*
http://bit.ly/foss-why-care

On 24 May 2016 at 03:23, Edinburgh Linux Users Group <
edlug at lists.edlug.org.uk> wrote:

> Hello Any LUGer
>
> Re: mounting name adjustment
>
>
>
> I am a few years new to Linux and have migrated to Linux Mint as
> a comfortable distro from my long tribulations with MSWin versions.
> Our Cowichan Valley BC Canada CowLUG and listserver has recently
> exhausted to a static web page so I need seek help from far.
>
>
> My mounting issue
>
> I like to use extra partitions on my hard drives over the often
> recommended sda1/boot, sda5/, sda6/(Linux swap), and sda7/home.
>
> On my Linux Mint 16 machine I was able to fit a partition after
> the swap and before the /home. It was sda7/space followed by
> sda8/home.
>
> In my file manager under Devices it is listed /space. I click on
> it to mount it as the standard user, having changed ownership
> from root to the user with the mount point in the /media/(user)
> folder.
>
> There may be other ways to mount /space but I am satisfied with
> this arrangement for now.
>
> On my Linux Mint 17.2 machine I was more ambitious and I created
> three extra partitions after the sda6/swap to be sda7/wares,
> sda8/store, and sda9/spare, with sda10/home.
>
> I changed ownership of /store /spare and /wares from root to the
> user.
>
> All worked well with the new mount points in the /media/(user)
> folder with ownership set to that user.
>
>
>
> My latest problem
>
> I then later started to build a multi core 64bit machine
> with a 1 Terabyte drive and partitioned after the swap sda7/arch of
> about 500GB space and sda8/home of the remaining 350GB of the drive.
>
> The idea is to move completed work from /home/(user) to the /arch
> where it can be out of the way of the /home space.
>
> Collections of files can be burned to a data DVD when no longer
> needed to be on line all the time and making more /arch space
> available. That is how I worked with other operating systems to
> manage large Data flow.
>
> I think I made an error forgetting to make the mount point
> for /arch /media/(user) and putting it instead into /mnt/.
>
> Using the Disks utility I can get it to mount a a 500GB drive but
> not the /arch name I want to use.
>
> I think I need to delete the /mnt/arch mount point and make it in
> the /media/(user) folder. I ran into the problem of not knowing
> how to delete or edit the entry in /mnt.
>
> 1) Can anyone tell me about changing and/or editing mount points.
> Is it safe to do so, is there any documentation about this.
>
> 2) I am also looking for the rules or options of how to edit mount
> options in the Disks utility. If I alter one field it seems to want
> to change other fields in the edit mount options settings.
>
> 3) Can you suggest any other related and useful documentation to
> these mounting issues.
>
> 4) With other operating systems partitioning a drive often speeds up
> the partition one is logged into. Splitting a drive C: to equal C:,
> D: and E: makes working in each about 3 times faster.
> Also there were less bad sector errors, often none on the partition
> closest to the hub. Are there related benefits with Linux parts.
>
> I have been able to learn some things about editing /etc/fstab
> and prefer to use the UUID to identify the drives and partitions.
>
> I also have used sudo chmod a+w /partition-name to check that the
> partition settings are as I require them.
>
> I also was able to mount the /sda7/arch partition with some changes
> to the disk utility but not with the name /arch as I want to do.
>
> So many new learned tricks but so much more on my learning curve.
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Dee     adaudio at bc1.com
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> EdLUG mailing list
> EdLUG at lists.edlug.org.uk
> https://lists.edlug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/edlug
>
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