I mounted an extra partition for a Linux account and found it unmounted after reboot. Why?

Question

I have an extra ext3 primary partition that I wanted to mount for a particular Linux user account. I ran mkdir, mount, chown, and all was good. However, upon reboot I have discovered that the partition is no longer mounted. How can I mount, and keep mounted, an extra partition in Linux? The hard disk is SATA, if that matters. Thanks.

Answer 1

You will need to edit your /etc/fstab file to include a line detailing the filesystem, mount point and options. Here's a good post from the ubuntu forums detailing the fstab file.

Answer 2

Edit the your /etc/fstab and add a new line that looks similar to the following:

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/device auto defaults 1 0

• /dev/sda1 should be the path to the device you want to mount
• /mnt/device should be the directory you want to mount the device to
• auto can be replaced with the filesystem type of the device you are mounting (e.g. ext3)
• defaults can be replaced with options such as ro, noauto, etc. (multiple options should be separated by commas)
• 1 means the backup utility dump will backup the filesystem (0 means it will NOT be backed up)
• 0 tells fsck the order in which the filesystems will be mounted (0 means the filesystem is ignored)

For more information and a list of the options/filesystem types available, you can either 'man fstab' or visit the Wikipedia entry.