# write permissions on hd

## Captin

My Gentoo box crashed on me the other night. when I restarted one of my file harddrives was missing. I checked my fstab and changed the permissions to ro after doing this my drive would show up after reboot. If I change the permissions back to rw the harddrive won't even show up in /dev or anywhere else for that matter. Any ideas?

Thanks

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## adaptr

Which partition, i.e. where is it normally mounted?

What were the errors on booting it normally ?

You can remount a mounted drive on-the-fly if you need to:

```
mount -o remount,rw  /mnt/point
```

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## Captin

my fstab line is:

/dev/hdd1   /mnt/media   vfat   users,owner,rw,umask=000        0 0

the boot up errors are:

fsck: Error 2 while executing fsck.Reiserfs for /dev/hda4

modprobe: Can't locate module /dev/hdd1

mount: special device /dev/hdd1 does not exist

some local filesystem failed to mount

I was bit torrenting a file to that hd when it crashed.

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## Captin

hmmm, seems like nobody has any suggestions. 

Remounting the drive after boot seems to work fine. I can write to the drive and everything. however thats something else that I have to remember after boot everytime. If anyone has any ideas they would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks again

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## adaptr

 *Captin wrote:*   

> hmmm, seems like nobody has any suggestions. 

 

Hey, give us time for a breath!

I suggest you post your entire fstab - properly formatted, monospaced font - use "code"!

 *Captin wrote:*   

> however thats something else that I have to remember after boot everytime.

 

Well then put it in /etc/conf.d/local.start...

Better solve the problem, though.

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## Captin

I do appreciate all your help. The drive in question is /dev/hdd1, the vfat labeled media. normally I have the permission as rw. Anyway here is my fstab:

  GNU nano 1.2.1                                           File: /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.

# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-src/rc-scripts/etc/fstab,v 1.13 2003/07/17 19:55:18 azarah Exp $

#

# noatime turns off atimes for increased performance (atimes normally aren't

# needed; notail increases performance of ReiserFS (at the expense of storage

# efficiency).  It's safe to drop the noatime options if you want and to

# switch between notail and tail freely.

# <fs>                  <mountpoint>    <type>          <opts>                                  <dump/pass>

# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.

#/dev/BOOT              /boot           ext2            noauto,noatime                          1 1

/dev/hda1               /boot           ext2            noauto,noatime                          1 1

/dev/hda4               /               ReiserFS        noatime,notail                          0 0

/dev/hda3               none            swap            sw                                      0 0

/dev/cdroms/cdrom0      /mnt/cdrom      iso9660         users,owner,noauto,ro,umask=000         0 0

/dev/hdb1               /mnt/media2     ntfs            users,owner,ro,umask=000                0 0

/dev/hdd1               /mnt/media      vfat            users,owner,ro,umask=000                0 0

# NOTE: The next line is critical for boot!

none                    /proc           proc            defaults                0 0

# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for

# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).

# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will

#  use almost no memory if not populated with files)

# Adding the following line to /etc/fstab should take care of this:

none                    /dev/shm        tmpfs           defaults                0 0

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## adaptr

You did not follow my advice, then.

Please use 

```
CODE!!!
```

for properly monospaced config files and commands!

And you can leave out the comments; I won't mind, and it will improve legibility.

Sundry notes:

- there is no filesystem called "ReiserFS" - it's called "reiserfs", always lowercase.

- drop the "fs check" number for the boot partition - it's essentially pointless, since it will already have worked by the time fstab is read.

- DO use "fs check number" = 1 for the root partition - this means that root is the first partition checked on booting.

- As mentioned earlier, reiserfs is not particularly faster for a system partition, but anyway the "notail" option is only needed for boot, not any other partition.

- The option to enable ordinary users to mount partitions is not users, it is user.

Note the mount; it has nothing to do with ability to access these partitions; if you want to always mount the partitions on boot just remove the whole "user/s" part.

Also note that it may be a good idea for the cdrom to be mountable by users.

```
man fstab

man mount
```

Please read, really really read these.

As for the errors:

What does the partition table say?

IS there a /dev/hdd1 available on bootup?

Note that this WILL depend on the use of DevFS.

Always compile DevFS into the kernel.

 *Quote:*   

> I was bit torrenting a file to that hd when it crashed.

 

So the problem could have been a faulty bittorrent?

It's hard for me to say what exactly is the problem or causing it, since I don't know how the system boots up in a normal state.

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## Captin

here once again is my fstab

```

 GNU nano 1.2.1                                               File: /etc/fstab

                                                                                                                                                      

# <fs>                  <mountpoint>    <type>          <opts>                     <dump/pass>

                                                                                                                                          

/dev/hda1               /boot           ext2            noauto,noatime,notail           1 0

/dev/hda4               /               reiserfs        noatime                         0 1

/dev/hda3               none            swap            sw                              0 0

/dev/cdroms/cdrom0      /mnt/cdrom      iso9660         users,ro,umask=000              0 0

                                                                                                                                          

/dev/hdb1               /mnt/media2     ntfs            users,ro,umask=000              0 0

/dev/hdd1               /mnt/media      vfat            users,ro,umask=000              0 0

                                                                                                                                          

```

regarding your comment 

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
>  -The option to enable ordinary users to mount partitions is not users, it is user.
> 
> Note the mount; it has nothing to do with ability to access these partitions; if you want to always mount the partitions on boot just remove the whole "user/s" part.
> ...

 

there is an option users. This option allows all users to mount and umount devices. This can be useful since the cdrom is mounted by root on boot. without the users option, I can not umount my cdrom from my user.

Thanks for those other tips

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## adaptr

If you say "users" works then that's how it is, of course; I don't remember it anywhere in my mount man page, oh well.

So does the boot-up mount still complain about the missing hdd1 ?

It's vfat, so fsck wouldn't be able to correct or even check it;

In fact, what it says is that the device node for hdd1 doesn't even exist - which is surely not true.

Or rather, it does exist (these are all sort of auto-generated for all possible HDs up to partition #20 or something), but there is no actual HD partition behind it - or so it says.

Compare it with the output from

```
dmesg | grep -A10 "Partition check"
```

to see what the kernel thinks about your HD.

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## Captin

O.k. here is what dmesg told me:

```
russel@bob russel $ dmesg | grep -A10 "Partition check"

Partition check:

 /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 < p5 > p3 p4

 /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0: p1

 /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0: [PTBL] [7297/255/63] p1

RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 8192K size 1024 blocksize

Equalizer1996: $Revision: 1.2.1 $ $Date: 1996/09/22 13:52:00 $ Simon Janes (simon@ncm.com)

SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00

kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2

kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2

kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2

mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice

```

I'm not to sure what its saying.

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## adaptr

 *Captin wrote:*   

> O.k. here is what dmesg told me:
> 
> ```
> russel@bob russel $ dmesg | grep -A10 "Partition check"
> 
> ...

 

/dev/hda, primary master drive (system boot drive) with 3 primary partitions, 1 logical partition.

 *Captin wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
>  /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0: p1
> ```
> ...

 

/dev/hdc, secondary master drive with 1 primary partition.

 *Captin wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0: [PTBL] [7297/255/63] p1
> ```
> ...

 

/dev/hdg - secondary master drive on extra IDE controller, 1 primary partition.

Here's how the scheme works:

lun0 - master drive (Logical Unit Number - borrowed from scsi spec)

lun1 - slave drive

target 0 - primary channel on controller

target 1 - secondary channel

bus 0 - system IDE controller, hda thru hdd

bus 1 - additional IDE controller, hde thru hdh

 *Captin wrote:*   

> I'm not to sure what its saying.

 

It's saying that you do not have a hdd - really.

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## Captin

Well thanks for your help. I think I've fixed it. 

I used scandisk on a window box and everything seems to be working. 

I appreciate all the usefully thoughts and suggestions you had.

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