ntfs-3g mount point disappears, but its bound folders remain

deltaecho · 2009-08-20 20:14:23

My job requires I do a lot of my work from Windows, so I keep all my personal files on my laptop's Windows partition. What I've been doing is mounting the Windows partition via ntfs-3g, and binding the folders containing my personal files to their equivalent in my $HOME directory.

The strange thing is, although the folders in my $HOME directory remain mounted, all the files in Windows' mount point disappear, and it is no longer shown as mounted. Running `mount -a' remounts the partition, but I'm weary of doing that because of the risks involved with mounting a partition twice.

Has anyone experienced this before?

djszapi · 2009-08-23 05:49:55

Hello deltaecho!

"I'm weary of doing that because of the risks involved with mounting a partition twice." -> What kind of risk?

Acecero · 2009-08-23 05:59:38

From your description, it sounds like your ntfs-3g mounts unmounted itself from your folders. That sounds like a bug. I don't think there's any kind of risk with remounting partitions if you already noticed that the mount had already disappeared before hand using either "df" or "mount" commands.

deltaecho · 2009-08-23 13:55:52

@djszapi and @Acecero, thanks both of you for your replies!

@djszapi, by mounting a filesystem twice, you run an extreme risk of corrupting its data (as I learned the hard way) -- making an educated guess as to the reason for this, when a filesystem is mounted >= 2 times, multiple processes will be accessing and modifying its data in an unsynchronized fashion (i.e. two processes may open the same file, make changes to it, and resave it with respect to its original state and NOT the new one introduced by the other process).

@Acecero, I do believe this is a bug, but I don't know if it's with ntfs-3g, some config option I've set, or some other application; the funny thing is, the folders I've bound still contain the content of their Windows' counterparts, and I can add to / remove from / modify the files in them and the changes will take place in the NTFS partition. Take for instance:

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9824e5e5

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       34041   273434300    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           34042       34054      104422+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3           34055       38913    39029917+  83  Linux

# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3              38G   20G   18G  54% /
none                  2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda2              99M   13M   82M  13% /boot
none                  4.0G  117M  3.9G   3% /tmp
none                  2.0G  253M  1.8G  13% /var/tmp
/var/lib/pacman.img   512M   93M  420M  19% /var/lib/pacman

# cat /proc/mounts                                        
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0                                           
/dev/root / reiserfs rw,noatime,notail 0 0                       
none /dev ramfs rw,relatime 0 0                                  
none /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0                                  
none /sys sysfs rw,relatime 0 0                                  
none /dev/pts devpts rw,relatime,mode=600 0 0                    
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw,relatime 0 0
/dev/sda2 /boot ext3 rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=continue,data=writeback 0 0
none /tmp tmpfs rw,relatime,size=4194304k,nr_inodes=1048576 0 0
none /var/tmp tmpfs rw,relatime,size=2097152k,nr_inodes=1048576 0 0
/dev/loop0 /var/lib/pacman reiserfs rw,noatime,notail 0 0
/dev/sda1 /home/vandamme/Desktop fuseblk rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda1 /home/vandamme/Documents fuseblk rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda1 /home/vandamme/Downloads fuseblk rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda1 /home/vandamme/Music fuseblk rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda1 /home/vandamme/Pictures fuseblk rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda1 /home/vandamme/Vault fuseblk rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda1 /home/vandamme/Videos fuseblk rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda1 /home/vandamme/Workspace fuseblk rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda1 /home/Public fuseblk rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda1 /srv/http fuseblk rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0

Notice all the /dev/sda1 bound mount points, although /dev/sda1 isn't shown as mounted? Strange, huh?

If I do remount the partition, it will remain mounted until I reboot, but I'm not comfortable doing that until I can track down the issue.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-08-20 20:14:23

ntfs-3g mount point disappears, but its bound folders remain

#2 2009-08-23 05:49:55

Re: ntfs-3g mount point disappears, but its bound folders remain

#3 2009-08-23 05:59:38

Re: ntfs-3g mount point disappears, but its bound folders remain

#4 2009-08-23 13:55:52

Re: ntfs-3g mount point disappears, but its bound folders remain

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