Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Auto Mount Partitions on Boot (Linux Mint/ Ubuntu)

If you are using Linux Mint or Ubuntu, you might have observed that you need to mount all partition each time when you boot the system. So, here I come with solution "Automounting".. The partition will be automouted. So, you can get rid of mouting partition after every boot.

To auto mount drive on boot, follow steps ahead :)


1. Create mount point, where drive will mount. So, you need to create a folder somewhere in /media/ or /home. Anywhere you are comfortable.

Example:  $mkdir /media/c

2. Find Out  Partition Identifier, there are three types of partition identifier :
 a) /dev/sdxx  : you can use blkid  or df command to determine the same.

For Example: /dev/sda1

 b)Either, you can find UUID for all drive, the robust option, it works well even if you remove drive and plug it again.

UUID="BCFC8B73FC8B26AC"

c) LABLE as partition Identifiere: If you use gparted for partitioning, they provide facility to give label name for partition.
For Example : LABLE="Songs"


Lets look at command blkid :

sudo blkid
[sudo] password for me:
/dev/sda1: UUID="BCFC8B73FC8B26AC" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: LABEL="New Volume" UUID="C6CCD31FCCD30917" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda6: LABEL="Songs" UUID="A404DC7904DC4FC2" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda7: LABEL="Hindi Movies" UUID="D2FCE9A3FCE98259" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda8: LABEL="New Volume" UUID="9854F0E454F0C5D2" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda9: LABEL="New Volume" UUID="D8F0F85AF0F84074" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda10: UUID="32C3-97D8" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sda11: UUID="fcdb8151-3a1e-42cb-92dc-e0aa8c66791e" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda12: UUID="953d99ee-5fe1-482e-8ee8-0900a9260500" TYPE="ext4"



You can clearly see all type of Partition Identifier.


3. Now, look at file  /etc/fstab. Here goes the all auto mount script. You may already find default automounting script. So now, you need to construct mounting line based on your system, as follows:

For NTFS partition:
mkdir /media/c
sudo su
echo "/dev/sda1 /media/c ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

For FAT32 partition:

mkdir /media/c
sudo su
echo "/dev/sda1 /media/c vfat umask=0000,uid=1000,gid=1000,auto,rw,users 0 0" >> /etc/fstab 

For EXT3 partition:

mkdir /media/c
sudo su
echo "/dev/sda1 /media/c ext3 defaults,noatime 0 2" >> /etc/fstab


In this example, you can see we are using /dev/sda1 as Partition Identifier.

You can also make use of UUID or LABLE like given below:

echo " UUID=C6CCD31FCCD30917 /media/c ext3 defaults,noatime 0 2" >> /etc/fstab

OR

echo " LABEL=Songs /media/c ext3 defaults,noatime 0 2" >> /etc/fstab


Note: change your bold characters according to your system.

Restart the sytem. You can find your partition auto mounte.

Cheers!!!! :)

-Neel