Using a hotswap rack[SOLVED]

[A.S. Pushkin]

I hate to pose this question, but searches have not yielded an answer.

Last year I built a new box. My system is loaded on a Samsung 850 PRO SSD, with home partition on a Seagate Baracuda.
I decided to include a hotswap rack and currently have a Seagate 1TB installed there. The intent is primarily for files from CAD(Blender and Freecad), video and audio editing.

Currently it it does work, but I don't like the way it is mounted and wonder how I might alter that. Right now it mounts like this:

/dev/sdd2 437G 71M 414G 1% /run/media/pushkin/389cf391-5608-4b9f-be33-84939c3f37f2
/dev/sdd1 481G 70M 456G 1% /run/media/pushkin/9a84a5b7-8b2f-48ab-a5a8-6bf68365a6b7

I have a two partitions on that drive right now. I had hoped to have the rack mount under other than /mnt or /media.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
_________________
ASPushkin

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell

[Roman_Gruber]

[NeddySeagoon]

A.S. Pushkin,

Make mount points wherever you want. Under /mnt is traditional.
Add entries to /etc/fstab to perform the mount.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[A.S. Pushkin]

Thanks for the responses.

Roman_Gruber I'm beginning to agree with you on the automount. I'm embarrassed to say I've never fully grasped mounting
so I initially was happy with it, but see this as a small problem.

NeddySeagoon thank you, too.

May I pose a question to you both? I've tried setting fstab to handle this hotswap rack. When I built this current box, I created
a special location, but I suspect Roman_Gruber is right, that is to mount at /mnt. The question I have is if I add an fstab entry can I make a generic one
that would function for any sata drive I would install in the hotswap rack, at /mnt regardless of partition schemes that may be used? Currently
the 1TB drive has two partitions, but that might vary depending on the use. The current drive is just extra space, but others might be used for
audio editing and video editing. I'm working with Blender, Freecad, ardour and kdenlive. I may jump into a commercial CAD program BricsCAD as well.

Thanks!
_________________
ASPushkin

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell

[Roman_Gruber]

[NeddySeagoon]

A.S. Pushkin,

You cannot make a generic fstab entry for any hard drive.
You don't mount drives, you mount the filesystems that they contain. To do that, you need to know something about either the partition that holds the filesystem, or the partition itself.
It follows that you need to know how many partitions are on the drive at a minimum.

You can cheat a little though. If you know that several partitions are all mutually exclusive, because, say, you can only put one drive into the hot swap bay at a time, you can have several fstab entries poinitng to the same mount point.

e.g.

[szatox]

Hint: LABEL is a very convenient feature.
I don't swap drives nearly often enough to care, but if I needed automount I'd go with a cheat script creating directories named after labels on filesystems then mounting there.
Maybe - just maybe - you could even use already existing helpers. GUI tools are doing something similar. It can be good enough unless they depend on half of the DE

[A.S. Pushkin]

NeddySeagoon, szatox, and Roman_Gruber, thanks for the input. It's clear I've been playing a Windose
user with my Linux box.

I like the idea of LVM, too.

I should add that I've used Clonezilla very successfuly.

Thanks.
_________________
ASPushkin

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell

[A.S. Pushkin]

Until my recent update, which ever drive was in the hotswap rack would be auto mounted. With that update it no longer does.
if I run the mount command I can mount it at /mnt.

When I built my current box I opted to move my distfiles to a separate drive to save space on my / drive.
Currently fstab has it mounted at /mnt, which is a problem as when I mount manually to drive in my hotswap
rack. I typically use that for CAD files and Video/audio files. I'd like to mount the distfiles drive another way.
I'm not certain if I should create a directory off of / or what, so that I can leave /mnt free. My optical drive
mounts at /media.

Suggestions would be appreciated.

TIA.
_________________
ASPushkin

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell

[NeddySeagoon]

A.S. Pushkin,

/mnt is not intended to be used as a mount point itself.
Its directory containing other mount points.

[A.S. Pushkin]

Thanks for the feedback! You may have covered this here, but let me ask this question
as it clearly will vary with each drive.

As I noted, with my recent upgrade the automounter is no longer working on my hotswap rack.


I'll have to get my Unix book out as now I've been reminded that everything is about "files"
and that applies in Linux as well.

NeddySeagoon thanks for the refresher, too, about /mnt.

I've never used LVM, though I would like to have done so, but this raises still another question.
If my Linux box is not using LVM, can I set LVM up on what amounts to a portable drive, that is
a drive in a hotswap rack?

As I think about it, though I like the automounter, I do prefer having more control on what I attach to
my system.

Thanks for the help in this.
_________________
ASPushkin

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell

[A.S. Pushkin]

NeddySeagoon thanks for this reminder!