Many thanks for your email, David.
Apologies for any contradictory messages i have posted. My understanding of the automatic mount of USB devices has been rapidly evolving.
I have now seen that people have had various problems with usbmount over the years, so I can quite understand why it might not be in the most recent Debian distributions.
My plan is to update my distribution very soon, but first I need to do a backup of the system to a USB portable hard drive (which uses NTFS).
I would like this backup to go as smoothly as possible.
On Thu 29 Oct 2020 at 18:40:53 (+0000), Mick Ab wrote:
> I am fairly convinced that the USB 3 port previously mentioned has a loose
> connection.
>
> It also seems to me that a FAT32 device such as a memory stick is
> automatically mounted when inserted in a USB port while the system
> is running, if such a device is not referenced in /etc/fstab.
Call that paragraph ¶ 2.
> What is not clear to me is what happens to an NTFS device such as a
> portable drive when it is inserted in a USB port while the system is
> running, if the device is not referenced in /etc/fstab.
>
> The following point is observed :-
>
> USB devices referenced in /etc/fstab are automatically mounted when the
> system is rebooted, even though their entries include the noauto option
> (the devices are already plugged in when a reboot is performed).
As I thought, this observation contradicts the first thought expressed
in your Tue, 27 Oct 2020 20:43:52 +0000 post (the last paragraph of
quote below). I presume that although mounting is disallowed for mount -a
(by noauto), your automounter is not constrained in this way.
> What happens to a USB device that is not referenced in /etc/fstab,
> when it is plugged into a USB port while the system is running :-
>
> If the filesystem is FAT32 (e.g. a memory stick) will it always be
> automatically mounted or will it always have to be manually mounted ?
Isn't that just what you answered in ¶ 2 above?
> If the filesystem is NTFS (e.g. a portable hard drive) will it always
> be automatically mounted or will it always have to be manually mounted ?
>
> The automount system appears to be usbmount.
I guess your answer lies there then. AFAICT usbmount hasn't been
included in the last two stable distributions (stretch and buster).
I've never used it. I assume there are others here for which this
all works. (I've left it a day before replying.) I can't work out
where your questions are leading, and whether you have a problem
to solve (besides having flaky hardware).
> On 29 Oct 2020 17:33, "David Wright" <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> wrote:
> > On Tue 27 Oct 2020 at 20:43:52 (+0000), Mick Ab wrote:
> > >
> > > It seems to me that the situation is as follows :-
> > >
> > > Filesystems in /etc/fstab which have the noauto option are not
> > > automatically mounted at boot time, so if these filesystems are already
> > > plugged into USB ports at boot time, they would subsequently have to be
> > > manually mounted in order to be used.
> > >
Cheers,
David.