Re: [SLUG] Mount point does not exist - 2

From: Paul M Foster (paulf@quillandmouse.com)
Date: Mon Apr 23 2001 - 00:02:11 EDT


On Sun, Apr 22, 2001 at 09:44:39PM -0400, Frank Roberts wrote:

>
> When I attempt to do a ls from command line /mnt dir I get a message
> sayinf that either fstab or mtab is configured incorrectly.
> On boot I get an error message saying that rwcdrom does not have a mount
> point.
>
>
> Line was added to /etc/fstab
> /mnt/rwcdrom /mnt/rwcdrom supermount fs=iso9660, dev=/dev/rwcdrom
> 00
>
> I attempted to add the following line added to /etc/mtab
> /mnt/rwcdrom /mnt/rwcdrom supermount
> rw,fs=iso9660,dev=/dev/rwcdrom 00
>
> After addition I checked /mnt with ls. I did not get a listing of
> rwcdrom.
>
> So I rebooted the system.
>
> Checked contents of fstab and mtab.
> fstab was modified.
> mtab was not as modified but had returned to the original file.
>
> Hope someone has some suggestions.
>
> Thanks
> Frank

Okay, you keep posting the same example, which is inconsistent with what
I know of fstab. So I'm going to assume you're using an fstab file
formatted like the rest of us. I'm going to step-by-step the fstab file
edit, so you see what each thing should be and why.

The first field is the name of the device. That is, /dev/hdd or
somesuch. You posted something earlier about this, that it was /dev/hdc
or /dev/hdd. So it's one of those. I _isn't_ somethin in your /mnt
directory, so if you've got /mnt anything in that first slot, it's not
right. Devices are in the /dev directory, not the /mnt directory.

Also note that anything that looks like a "normal" device name is not
really the device name, but a symbolic link to the device. That is,
there is no such real device as, for instance, /dev/floppy. Most likely,
the real device is something like /dev/fd0H1440. Someone may have set up
a symlink so that /dev/floppy links to /dev/fd0H1440, but it's still
just a symbolic link to that actual device name.

The second parameter is the mount point. If you want to access a device
like a hard drive on a Linux system, you have to "mount" it somewhere.
If you just try to read raw data from the device, you'll have a hard
time. "Mounting" links your device up to the rest of the filesystem and
makes a place for all the stuff that's on that device. Typically the
"mount point" is in the /mnt directory tree somewhere, but it doesn't
have to be. In your case, it's probably /mnt/rwcdrom. For a floppy, it
would probably be /mnt/floppy. Also _very_ important. You must _create_
the mount point before you can _use_ it. It's just a directory. Create
it as root.

The third parameter is typically the type of filesystem on that device.
You've put "supermount" here, but I have never seen anything like that
before. Normally a CDROM is "iso9660". A regular hard drive would
usually be something like "ext2".

The fourth parameter indicates what parameters would be passed to the
mount command in order to mount this filesystem. You "rw" is probably
correct, but "fs=iso9660" seems redundant if you have that as the third
parameter (see above). There are other options possible, like "noauto",
"user", etc. The fstab and mount man pages describe these.

The last two parameters are probably not important for your system, and
should both be 0. You've squashed them together, so you ought to
separate them, as "0 0".

So in the end, you should have something roughly like:

/dev/hdd /mnt/rwcdrom iso9660 noauto,user 0 0

You can test your mounting system for a drive by giving a mount command
with all the appropriate parameters. That is, you can manually mount it.
In your case,

mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdd /mnt/rwcdrom

(I guess /dev/hdd is right for you. I don't know.)

If it won't mount from this command, then it doesn't matter what you put
in fstab. You need to get this right before you edit fstab. Making the
mount command work will require that it _is_ an iso9660 filesystem, that
it is correctly inserted in the drive (not upside down), that the device
itself exists in the /dev directory, and that the mount point
(/mnt/rwcdrom) does exist. If any of these things are wrong, it won't
mount. And if there's nothing on the CDROM, you still won't get
anything. Try to mount a standard CDROM in your CDRW drive first, since
that's lowest common denominator.

Once the mount command works, unmount the CDROM ("umount" command). Then
tweak your fstab. Then attempt to mount the drive again, this time with

mount /mnt/rwcdrom

When you do this, the mount command should read the fstab to determine
how to mount this drive, since you omitted a great many parameters.

I would strongly suggest you check out the man pages for fstab and
mount, and use Larry Sanders' fstab edits (posted earlier). If this
doesn't do it, then I don't know what to tell you.

Paul



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