Arch Linux

hauge

Member

Registered: 2008-01-20

Posts: 3

Problem with mounting external harddrive

Today, I've installed Arch for the first time after two years with Ubuntu. It seems to be working pretty well, but I've got a problem while mounting my external harddrive. The disc is has to partition, one formatted as ext3 and one as NTFS. Both partition shows up at the desktop, but after a while I get an error message concerning that the NTFS-partition cannot be mounted. It still appears as mounted, but I can't get access to it. The ext3-partition seems to be working, but when I try to copy a folder, the whole system freezes, and I haven't found any other things to do than pressing te power off-button.

$ tail -f var/log/messages.log

gives the following output:

Jan 21 04:01:18 hauge logger: ACPI action undefined: ADP1
Jan 21 04:01:18 hauge logger: ACPI group/action undefined: processor / CPU0
Jan 21 04:01:18 hauge logger: ACPI group/action undefined: processor / CPU0
Jan 21 04:01:22 hauge usb 4-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jan 21 04:01:22 hauge usb 4-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jan 21 04:01:22 hauge Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
Jan 21 04:01:22 hauge ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
Jan 21 04:01:22 hauge Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Jan 21 04:01:22 hauge scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jan 21 04:01:22 hauge usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
Jan 21 04:01:22 hauge USB Mass Storage support registered.
Jan 21 04:01:27 hauge scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WD       2500JB External  0107 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
Jan 21 04:01:27 hauge sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 488397168 512-byte hardware sectors (250059 MB)
Jan 21 04:01:27 hauge sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Jan 21 04:01:27 hauge sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 488397168 512-byte hardware sectors (250059 MB)
Jan 21 04:01:27 hauge sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Jan 21 04:01:27 hauge sdb: sdb1 sdb2
Jan 21 04:01:27 hauge sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
Jan 21 04:01:27 hauge sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
Jan 21 04:01:28 hauge kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
Jan 21 04:01:28 hauge EXT3 FS on sdb1, internal journal
Jan 21 04:01:28 hauge EXT3-fs: recovery complete.
Jan 21 04:01:28 hauge EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Jan 21 04:01:28 hauge hald: mounted /dev/sdb1 on behalf of uid 1000
Jan 21 04:01:29 hauge NTFS driver 2.1.28 [Flags: R/W MODULE].
Jan 21 04:01:29 hauge NTFS volume version 3.1.

My /etc/fstab looks like:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>        <dir>         <type>    <options>          <dump> <pass>
none                   /dev/pts      devpts    defaults            0      0
none                   /dev/shm      tmpfs     defaults            0      0


#/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
#/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd   udf   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/sda1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda3 / ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda4 /home ext2 defaults 0 1

Does anyone have an idea on what to do with this problem?

fi-dschi

Member

Registered: 2007-09-16

Posts: 19

Re: Problem with mounting external harddrive

You do perhaps have to include the partitions in the fstab file. This could help you:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fstab
You want to mount /dev/sdb1 (ext3) and /dev/sdb2 (ntfs) to any folders preferably in /mnt. You will have to create them as root. Have a look at
ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/
Maybe you want to mount from there as this method is not dependent on the order and usb port number you plug it in. For ntfs you can choose
noauto,uid=1000,gid=100,umask=027
as mount options in fstab if your user-id is 1000.