[Solved] conditional mounting

[printf]

i have a notebook with an ssd used for / and /home
it came with a docking station that has an ultrabay, where i put a normal hdd.

i would like to use a partition of the docking station's hdd as /var/tmp/portage (so it wont hurt the ssd)
but i want to disable /var/tmp/portage altogether when the notebook is not docked (optionally i could mount it as tmpfs if i absolutely need to install something on-the-go)

is this possible?
i know that then i will have to set up different scripts when it is removed from the docking station, but first i would like it to see that it has the hard drive with the correct uuid and mount it or disable /var/tmp/portage or redirect it somewhere so nothing gets written to the ssd

[NeddySeagoon]

printf,

In /etc/fstab, use the noauto option for the line that is used for the /var/tmp/portage entry.

When the hdd partition is mounted there, you will use the hdd. When its not, /var/tmp/portage will be in /
You will need to mount /var/trmp portage by hand when you want to use the hdd.
Alternatively, ignore the error message when the hdd is not present.

If you have 4G RAM or more, then /var/tmp/portage can be in RAM for all but the biggest packages.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

[printf]

[Hu]

You could mount a very tiny tmpfs on /var/tmp/portage, then overmount it with the HDD when available. Any attempt to access it when the HDD is unmounted would immediately encounter a "No space left on device" error.

[printf]

the tiny tmpfs seems as a good idea, but according to this thread: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/9332/how-can-i-create-a-dev-null-like-blackhole-directory
i could mount a nullfs there (https://github.com/xrgtn/nullfs), but i cant seem to find it in portage

[Akkara]

You can also mount something on it, but read-only. No writes will happen.