Mounting Linux partition

Kevin Miller wrote:
> VWWall wrote:
>> Why does openSUSE make it so hard to mount a partition from another
>> Linux distro? I multi-boot four Linux distros, (including openSUSE),
>> and WindowsXP. There are 12 partitions, two for each Linux distro, a
>> boot partition, a Windows partition, and a shared swap partition.
>>
>> I often wish to copy something from one Linux system to another. In
>> most Linux distros there's a "My Computer" or "Systems Media" which
>> shows all partitions, and allows mounting with a simple mouse click.
>>
>> I do know how to mount from the cli, and how to edit fstab to
>> automatically mount partitions. (openSUSE uses
>> "/dev/disk/by-id/scusi-SATA -(drive id)-partx" instead of UUID in
>> fstab), and mounts only its own partitions and some Windows partitions.
>>
>> Am I missing something?
>
> openSUSE is quite happy mounting a partition from another distro.
> You don't have to use the /dev/disk/by-id/ nomenclature. If you prefer
> you can use /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc. You can change that in fstab if
> you like or you can add the additional partitions to using that style
> and leave the openSUSE partition descriptions as are they are.
>
Why not have the default install show all partitions? openSuse shows
all partitions by their approximate size. I have several of the same
size and there's no way to tell which one is which partition.

> I'm on my Debian box right now, and don't remember what the openSUSE "My
> Computer" equivalent looks like but IIRC, there's on right there on on
> the desktop. I expect that after you add the partition info to fstab it
> will be able to see them just fine...
>
I just edited fstab, mounting /dev/sda12 to /mnt, (a default directory
in "/"), and it did indeed appear in "My Computer" as "17G Media". An
attempt to unmount failed. I can probably sort out the error message,
but this just illustrates my comments above! I could do it neatly by
making sub-directories under /mnt for each added partition in fsab.

See Paul Gans' reply and my comment above. It is possible to make it
show partitions by another identifier than size, but it requires some
extra work.
--
Virg Wall

Kevin Miller <atftb2 RemoveThis @alaska.net> wrote:
>VWWall wrote:
>> Why does openSUSE make it so hard to mount a partition from another
>> Linux distro? I multi-boot four Linux distros, (including openSUSE),
>> and WindowsXP. There are 12 partitions, two for each Linux distro, a
>> boot partition, a Windows partition, and a shared swap partition.
>>
>> I often wish to copy something from one Linux system to another. In
>> most Linux distros there's a "My Computer" or "Systems Media" which
>> shows all partitions, and allows mounting with a simple mouse click.
>>
>> I do know how to mount from the cli, and how to edit fstab to
>> automatically mount partitions. (openSUSE uses
>> "/dev/disk/by-id/scusi-SATA -(drive id)-partx" instead of UUID in
>> fstab), and mounts only its own partitions and some Windows partitions.
>>
>> Am I missing something?

>openSUSE is quite happy mounting a partition from another distro.
>You don't have to use the /dev/disk/by-id/ nomenclature. If you prefer
>you can use /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc. You can change that in fstab if
>you like or you can add the additional partitions to using that style
>and leave the openSUSE partition descriptions as are they are.

>I'm on my Debian box right now, and don't remember what the openSUSE "My
>Computer" equivalent looks like

In 11.1 (and earlier) it looks like a computer screen with Tux sitting
at the right-hand side. It is named "MY Computer" and lists all the
disks the system finds, including Windows disks.

>but IIRC, there's on right there on on
>the desktop. I expect that after you add the partition info to fstab it
>will be able to see them just fine...

--
--- Paul J. Gans

Paul J Gans wrote:
> Kevin Miller <atftb2 DeleteThis @alaska.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm on my Debian box right now, and don't remember what the openSUSE "My
>> Computer" equivalent looks like
>
> In 11.1 (and earlier) it looks like a computer screen with Tux sitting
> at the right-hand side. It is named "MY Computer" and lists all the
> disks the system finds, including Windows disks.
>
The point is, it only "finds" the Partitions, (disks), that are a part
of its own install or Windows. On most distros I've used, "My Computer"
lists all the partitions on the box, and allows easy mounting.

Adding additional partitions to fstab will show them on "My Computer",
but why not show them by default?

--
Virg Wall

VWWall wrote:

> Why does openSUSE make it so hard to mount a partition from another
> Linux distro? I multi-boot four Linux distros, (including openSUSE),
> and WindowsXP. There are 12 partitions, two for each Linux distro, a
> boot partition, a Windows partition, and a shared swap partition.
>
> I often wish to copy something from one Linux system to another. In
> most Linux distros there's a "My Computer" or "Systems Media" which
> shows all partitions, and allows mounting with a simple mouse click.
>
> I do know how to mount from the cli, and how to edit fstab to
> automatically mount partitions. (openSUSE uses
> "/dev/disk/by-id/scusi-SATA -(drive id)-partx" instead of UUID in
> fstab), and mounts only its own partitions and some Windows partitions.
>
> Am I missing something?


openSUSE & KDE 4.3:
just open dolphin en click on it (+ enter root pasword)
http://users.telenet.be/photo-memories/img/kde4-dolphin-mount.png

other option open YaST - System - Partition
--
EOS
www.photo-memories.be
Running KDE 4.3.2 / openSUSE 11.2 RC1
http://tinyurl.com/y8hl95j

[[This message is not archived, and is only displayed for one month past post date.]]

VWWall wrote:
> Why not have the default install show all partitions?

It does, if you want to.

> openSuse shows
> all partitions by their approximate size.

See, it DOES show all partitions.

> I have several of the same
> size and there's no way to tell which one is which partition.

If you can not tell them appart, how should openSUSE do that? However I
can clearly see all the partitions. It is however still confusing to me
that I see /dev/sda1 in YaST and with `df`, yet fstab shows some stupid
code that means absolutely nothing to me.
Takes 3 mouseclicks per partition to change that.

> I just edited fstab, mounting /dev/sda12 to /mnt, (a default directory
> in "/"),

What is the line you added? I always use YaST to add new partitions.
That way I do much less things wrong. And going to the fstab options,
you can do a lot of settings there.

> and it did indeed appear in "My Computer" as "17G Media". An
> attempt to unmount failed.

When thing fail, try CLI. `umount /mnt` and tell us what happens. Most
likely you do not have set the rights in such a way that the user is
allowed to unmount or someting is using the directory.

> I can probably sort out the error message,
> but this just illustrates my comments above!

No, it doesn't. At least not to me.

> I could do it neatly by
> making sub-directories under /mnt for each added partition in fsab.

That is what I do for /mnt as that is something I use for (very)
temporary mounts like iso images. All the rest goes into (sub)
directories in /media

> See Paul Gans' reply and my comment above. It is possible to make it
> show partitions by another identifier than size, but it requires some
> extra work.

No idea what that means as I see them as anything I like. But then I
look at them not with 'My Computer' or some other program that they
stole from Windows.

houghi
--
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done,
and why. Then do it.
-- Heinlein : Time Enough For Love

VWWall <vwall RemoveThis @large.invalid> wrote:
>Paul J Gans wrote:
>> Kevin Miller <atftb2 RemoveThis @alaska.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm on my Debian box right now, and don't remember what the openSUSE "My
>>> Computer" equivalent looks like
>>
>> In 11.1 (and earlier) it looks like a computer screen with Tux sitting
>> at the right-hand side. It is named "MY Computer" and lists all the
>> disks the system finds, including Windows disks.
>>
>The point is, it only "finds" the Partitions, (disks), that are a part
>of its own install or Windows. On most distros I've used, "My Computer"
>lists all the partitions on the box, and allows easy mounting.

>Adding additional partitions to fstab will show them on "My Computer",
>but why not show them by default?

I don't know. I have a dual boot system here at home and all
partitions on all disks are show. Of course the other OS is
Windows, so I don't know about other OS's.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

VWWall <vwall.RemoveThis@large.invalid> wrote:
>Kevin Miller wrote:
>> VWWall wrote:
>>> Why does openSUSE make it so hard to mount a partition from another
>>> Linux distro? I multi-boot four Linux distros, (including openSUSE),
>>> and WindowsXP. There are 12 partitions, two for each Linux distro, a
>>> boot partition, a Windows partition, and a shared swap partition.
>>>
>>> I often wish to copy something from one Linux system to another. In
>>> most Linux distros there's a "My Computer" or "Systems Media" which
>>> shows all partitions, and allows mounting with a simple mouse click.
>>>
>>> I do know how to mount from the cli, and how to edit fstab to
>>> automatically mount partitions. (openSUSE uses
>>> "/dev/disk/by-id/scusi-SATA -(drive id)-partx" instead of UUID in
>>> fstab), and mounts only its own partitions and some Windows partitions.
>>>
>>> Am I missing something?
>>
>> openSUSE is quite happy mounting a partition from another distro.
>> You don't have to use the /dev/disk/by-id/ nomenclature. If you prefer
>> you can use /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc. You can change that in fstab if
>> you like or you can add the additional partitions to using that style
>> and leave the openSUSE partition descriptions as are they are.
>>
>Why not have the default install show all partitions? openSuse shows
>all partitions by their approximate size. I have several of the same
>size and there's no way to tell which one is which partition.

I don't understand. If you open "My Computer" and click on one
of the disk partitions, a window opens showing you the contents
of the disk. If you can't tell by the files present, make a
zero length file in the root partition of each disk with the file
name a name to identify the disk.



>> I'm on my Debian box right now, and don't remember what the openSUSE "My
>> Computer" equivalent looks like but IIRC, there's on right there on on
>> the desktop. I expect that after you add the partition info to fstab it
>> will be able to see them just fine...
>>
>I just edited fstab, mounting /dev/sda12 to /mnt, (a default directory
>in "/"), and it did indeed appear in "My Computer" as "17G Media". An
>attempt to unmount failed. I can probably sort out the error message,
>but this just illustrates my comments above! I could do it neatly by
>making sub-directories under /mnt for each added partition in fsab.

>See Paul Gans' reply and my comment above. It is possible to make it
>show partitions by another identifier than size, but it requires some
>extra work.

Not much though.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

On Tuesday 27 Oct 2009 16:56, Paul J Gans played with alphabet
spaghetti and left this residue on the plate:

> In 11.1 (and earlier) it looks like a computer screen with Tux sitting
> at the right-hand side.

On one of my 11.1 systems, which is running KDE4.3.1, it looks like a
monitor with a blue background and Geeko in the middle of the "screen".
It's the same on another 11.1 system, this time with KDE3.5.10, as does
one of my 11.0 systems with KDE3.5.9. However, a third 11.1 system does
have the icon as you describe it, which makes me wonder which icons are
being used. At some point, I might even investigate it.

> It is named "MY Computer" and lists all the
> disks the system finds, including Windows disks.

My wife's 10.3 system dual-boots Windows[0], and I can confirm that
that is the sort of display she sees. My own systems are purely Linux
based with a single distro. The only exception to this is an iMac which
dual-boots MacOS 8.5 and openSUSE 11.1.

The only problem is that, unless the file systems are named[1], you
just get a generic name with the empty capacity to try and distinguish
between them. Not a lot of help if there's several partitions with
very similar sizes.


[0] Don't ask why, she hasn't booted into Windows for such a long time
that I can't remember her doing so.

[1] Various tools can (re)name file systems from the command line, and
YaST2 will do it through the GUI if you need to do it that way.

Regards,
David Bolt

--
Team Acorn: www.distributed.net OGR-NG @ ~100Mnodes RC5-72 @ ~1Mkeys/s
openSUSE 10.3 32b | openSUSE 11.0 32b | |
openSUSE 10.3 64b | openSUSE 11.0 64b | openSUSE 11.1 64b | openSUSE 11.2rc1
RISC OS 4.02 | RISC OS 3.11 | openSUSE 11.1 PPC | TOS 4.02

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David Bolt wrote:
> The only problem is that, unless the file systems are named[1], you
> just get a generic name with the empty capacity to try and distinguish
> between them. Not a lot of help if there's several partitions with
> very similar sizes.

This just made me wonder if I am perhaps completely missing the point.
What is the use of naming partitions in something like `My Computer`?

In Linux that is such a strange idea. (For the following I actualy did a
`df` as I did not know the outcome.) Say I have a partition dedicated to
Backup. And that this is /dev/sde1. Why would I need to know if this is
sde1? I just go to /media/backup.

Why would I, in Linux, care if this is sde1 or hdd12 or
penne:/home/houghi (sshfs) or some NFS mount or whatever? The only two
moments I would care about this (and it could be done in one step) is
during installation and then placing all the systems into fstab.

After that I do not see any use for it. I strictly use the tree layout
of the directory. When I connect my external HD, I do not go to
/dev/sdi1 (or whatever it is called) I go to /media/ExternalHD and that
would be what I would unmount.

I now remember where I saw the need to know what partitions are what.
Windows. In Linux there is no such need. I have also worked on BSD and
Linux machines where I would have no clue if the different directories
are on one partition, different partitions or different machines.

Having things point to partitions rather then to directories is making
thing unneccesarily difficult.

houghi
--
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done,
and why. Then do it.
-- Heinlein : Time Enough For Love

In <slrnheervk.k17.houghi.TakeThisOut@penne.houghi>, on 10/27/2009
at 11:11 PM, houghi <houghi.TakeThisOut@houghi.org.invalid> said:

>If you can not tell them appart, how should openSUSE do that?

He's not asking for open SUSE to magically distinguish the
indistinguishable, just to present all available data. There's certainly
an inconsistency as to which data are presented depending on which tool
you use.

Of course, it would help if the OP would consistently refer to the
specific tool, e.g.., "My Computer", instead of the generic term
"openSUSE".

>I always use YaST to add new partitions. That way I do much less
>things wrong. And going to the fstab options, you can do a lot of
>settings there.

Also, by going through Yast you don't have to worry about Yast undoing
your changes.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spamtrap.TakeThisOut@library.lspace.org

In <slrnhefu1u.k17.houghi RemoveThis @penne.houghi>, on 10/28/2009
at 08:52 AM, houghi <houghi RemoveThis @houghi.org.invalid> said:

>This just made me wonder if I am perhaps completely missing the point.

The point is identifying partitions and logical drives that are not
currently mounted.

>What is the use of naming partitions in something like `My Computer`?

It gives the user context. Of course, an intelligent choice of mount
points also gives the user context.

>In Linux that is such a strange idea. (For the following I actualy did a
>`df` as I did not know the outcome.) Say I have a partition dedicated to
>Backup. And that this is /dev/sde1. Why would I need to know if this is
>sde1? I just go to /media/backup.

That doesn't work if the file system is not already mounted. The OP wanted
to identify the FS in order to determine where he should mount it.

>The only two moments I would care about this (and it could be done
>in one step) is during installation and then placing all the systems
>into fstab.

Are those not the moments that the OP is concerned with?

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spamtrap RemoveThis @library.lspace.org

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Shmuel Metz wrote:
>>This just made me wonder if I am perhaps completely missing the point.
>
> The point is identifying partitions and logical drives that are not
> currently mounted.

OK. That is what I use YaST for.

>>What is the use of naming partitions in something like `My Computer`?
>
> It gives the user context. Of course, an intelligent choice of mount
> points also gives the user context.

The user does not need that context. It is a change of mindset I went
through as well when I came from Windows.
In Windows I need to go to e.g. X:\shared Documents\Sales\....
In Linux I would go to /media/shared Documents/Sales/....
Or whatever I would like and think is convinient. There is no need for
the user to know what partition, drives, pc's the directory is on.

> That doesn't work if the file system is not already mounted. The OP wanted
> to identify the FS in order to determine where he should mount it.

What you need to know as root is what sda1 sda2 and sda3 contain. If you
do not know that, then openSUSE does not know that. How should openSUSE
(or my imaginary girlfriend Ashley Judd) know what is on /dev/sde7? It
can see what fs it is, but that is about it. If those are pictures or
movies or a website or the /srv directory it can not know.

>>The only two moments I would care about this (and it could be done
>>in one step) is during installation and then placing all the systems
>>into fstab.
>
> Are those not the moments that the OP is concerned with?

Not as far as I can see, as he is looking at `My Computer` which means
that he looks at it from a user point of view, not a root point of view.
Root must know what his partions mean and then give them a directory
that fits the needs.

Those needs can be various. Mount at boot or not? Mountable by user or
not? Read only or not?

houghi
--
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done,
and why. Then do it.
-- Heinlein : Time Enough For Love

[[This message is not archived, and is only displayed for one month past post date.]]

Shmuel Metz wrote:
> He's not asking for open SUSE to magically distinguish the
> indistinguishable, just to present all available data. There's certainly
> an inconsistency as to which data are presented depending on which tool
> you use.

Use YaST. That will make things configurable.

> Of course, it would help if the OP would consistently refer to the
> specific tool, e.g.., "My Computer", instead of the generic term
> "openSUSE".

"My Computer" is a Window-ism that is not needed when you are looking at
partitions. (Only something evil like KDE and GNOME could come up with
such things. )

>>I always use YaST to add new partitions. That way I do much less
>>things wrong. And going to the fstab options, you can do a lot of
>>settings there.
>
> Also, by going through Yast you don't have to worry about Yast undoing
> your changes.

Well, it does do the changes that you want it to do.
What I do when I am done with YaST is edit fstab so that the order is in
an order I like. It will change lines, not delete them and add at the
end afterwards.


houghi
--
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done,
and why. Then do it.
-- Heinlein : Time Enough For Love