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I have a Debian sid system (Wheezy), without any desktop environment (and no Xorg at all).

I can mount my SD-cards, USB sticks, external HDD manually with mount / umount with the suitable entries in /etc/fstab but this is compelling, and to restrictive: if I want them to be mounted in /media/<LABEL> each device with a different <LABEL> needs its own entry, and each <LABEL> directory needs to be created / removed manually in /media/ as well).

So, what is the best way to mount them automatically in /media/<LABEL> at insertion (and to unmount them from the filesystem as soon as they are unplugged)?

The ideal solution would:

  1. detect when a removable media is plugged-in (added in /dev/ as sdax, sdbx, ... by udev)
  2. create a directory in /media/ according to its label (label of the removable media)
  3. mount it in the directory /media/<LABEL> in RW mode (if it's filesystem is supported)
  4. detect if the media has been unplugged
  5. if then, unmout it from the filesystem
  6. remove the corresponding directory from /media/

(the devices should be mounted in synchronous mode oviously, to avoid any data loss when hot unplugged because of caching)

I found some info about autofs, HAL, udisks, udisks2, etc., but it's unclear which one is deprecated or preferred, and anyway, I haven't figured out how to configure them easily on my system to do that, up to now ...

Minimalism, elegance, KISS, *nix-minded, no crazy unbearable XML policies files, and up-to-date highly appreciated.

edit: trying to make my question more clear

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I posted my questions on unix.stackexchange.com/questions/44454, maybe I'll have some more answers ... I'm not sure whether it should be deleted from here or not? – cedbeu Aug 1 '12 at 8:46

1 Answer

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You might want to check your /dev/disk/by-uuid directory while those specific drives are plugged-in. Using ls -l it will show you the devices (e.g. /dev/sdb1) along with their uuids. Having found the matches, update your /etc/fstab accordingly, replacing /dev/sd* with the corresponding /dev/disk/by-uuid/* entry.

For details, see my answer to How do I prevent USB flash drive from getting a new Linux device name after wake from sleep?.

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Actually, as I said, the devices are plugged in, I know their UUID/LABEL through either blkid or the /dev/disk/by-uuid directory. And I can mount them manually as well. Now, I already have them in /etc/fstab, actually eiter by label or by UUID, both work correctly. That doesn't really help though, since they are mounted at boot time only (as long as I do not specify noauto). But if I remove them and if I reinsert them while the system is running, they are not automatically unmounted / mouted in the directories I specified in fstab... This is my problem. – cedbeu Jul 31 '12 at 12:17
Looks like something weird -- as I use it for years for removables (e.g. SD-cards from my cameras, mobile devices as MP3 player, smartphones, tablets... And they all mount correctly at the designated mountpoint. If you remove them: do you unmount before, and mount again when re-inserting? You should do so, and then it should work. – Izzy Jul 31 '12 at 12:22
If I unmount them and mount them manually, everything works fine obviously. But my problem is that I want them to unmount (sync option in fstab) and mount them automatically (and as user as well as root) when I remove / insert them. That's why I guess either AutoFS, HAL, udisks, udisks2 (or hotplug, maybe ...?) or something similar is involved... But don't know what I'm missing exactly. – cedbeu Jul 31 '12 at 12:27
You probably miss that you still must unmount them manually -- or how shall the system know you're about to do that? Obvioulsy, once you unplugged it cannot be sync'd anymore, and neither cleanly unmounted. So the system assumes some drive-error -- but many times only discards the "old drive" after you plugged in the "new drive" again. So on auto-mount, the old mount point is still occupied -- which makes the "new" drive mount elsewhere. – Izzy Jul 31 '12 at 12:39
The hot plug / unplug system like hal (amongst others mentionned) should take care of unmounting the device of the fs if it's not plugged anymore. The sync option in /etc/fstab is used in this case for syncing the files of the device without caching, though avoiding data loss when hot-unplugging (w/o unmounting manually before). – cedbeu Jul 31 '12 at 13:31
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