Re: Automounting problems.

[Bob McGowan <bob_mcgowan@symantec.com>]

On 05/12/2010 02:55 AM, Chris Bannister wrote:
> On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 10:54:47PM -0700, Marc Shapiro wrote:
>> I am now slapping myself on the head for being so STUPID!  Automount is 
>> working just fine, and has been all along.  Automount does its thing as 
>> soon as a device is ACCESSED, not plugged in.  I was plugging the flash 
>> drives in and looking in /mnt to see if they were showing up.  The 
>> weren't.  The weren't supposed to, either.  As soon as I executed "ls 
>> /mnt/lexar" lo and behold, there was the listing and everything was 
>> working just fine.
>>
>> I think I'll slap myself on the head, again.
> 
> Not so fast! :) How are you supposed to access them if you don't know
> what they will be labelled as?
> 
> What does "ls /mnt/<TAB><TAB>" do?
> 
> Are you supposed to carry round a scrap of paper with the mount labels
> written down?
> 

No...

Generally, you set up an auto.xxx file to create a mount point in some
specific directory that is not /media.  For example, with xxx being 'usb':

 auto.usb: zodiac -fstype=vfat,rw,user,noauto,gid=backup,umask=002 \
           :/dev/disk/by-id/usb-ROCKCHIP_USB_MP3_USBV1.00

And auto.master:

 /var/autofs/usb /etc/auto.usb --timeout=###

This setup associates the auto.usb file with /var/autofs/usb and the
device identified by the id with the name zodiac.  The timeout should be
set to some convenient value.

So, automount will mount that device on /var/autofs/usb/zodiac, when it
is accessed.

You then create a symlink from /media to the above name:

  cd /media; ln -s /var/autofs/usb/zodiac zodiac

You will then do something to access that name, like 'ls /media/zodiac'
to get it mounted.

A simple 'ls /media' gives you the list of names that you've set up this
way.

To determine the name you need to use for the device path in the
auto.usb file, first do an 'ls' of /dev/disk/by-id before plugging the
device, and one after.  The new device name is what you use.

-- 
Bob McGowan