I'm pretty dumb so I came here to get help modify /etc/fstab so that my 2nd hard drive works

Support
21

hmm okay, I get this is supposed to be for NTFS , perhaps for dual boot disks. I think I want to just format this HDD to ext4 (i’ve already emptied it and formated) also I have a linux only boot ssd

22

If you defined an entry in /etc/fstab for your former partition, then next is to edit that entry for the new one, changing at least:

  • UUID
  • filesystem
23

Yeah thanks, I just commented it out so that it would boot. I will identify it by UUID because I understand that that’s more robust.

24

You are correct when you said earlier that the the “echo” looked kind of cryptic to me, I’m not sure what that does.

I was thinking of doing it a couple way if you might be inclined to check my work:

sudo mount /dev/sdb2 /run/media/WD930

I thought that I could if by command do it this way, above.

Or if I was to edit the /etc/fstab it might look like this: (note: the partition seems to be ext4, even though I don’t remember doing that, I just formatted it as NTFS on a windows 10 machine.

UUID=4268DB9368DB8457 /run/media/WD930 users 0 0

for reference below my KDE properties when I right clicked on the partition from the KDE partition manager looks like this (forgive me for pasting an image, I didn’t want to miss anything but I know I could have copied text)

Screenshot_20211129_125326
Screenshot_20211129_125326903×545 87.8 KB

25 
    /run/media  sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb1 /run/media/WD930                                12 ✘ 
mount: /run/media/WD930: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

UUID=639c9705-e321-46f7-b7c3-c5dc78b6fafc /run/media/WD930 users 0 0

26

The partition’s filesystem type is mandatory in /etc/fstab.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fstab#Usage

27

Thanks I’ll take a look at the wiki!
I guess I want to use the UUID for the partition. It’s interesting I note the UUID changed after things changed, I’m assuming bc I formatted the drive.

I reckon the following should be sufficient because it’s not a boot drive, if it’s a boot drive it seems like it requires echo and some of those other parameters and commands I’m less familiar with.

UUID=68EE887F-57E9-4EF7-BC08-FFFCAF3E371D /run/media/WD930/ ext4 users 0 0

hmm didn’t work, I think I need an maybe noatime or “defaults”

28

Okay well I cheated a little bit and used the GUI for part of it but it used the drive UUID and then I got it to boot! However the permissions still show the user and group as “root” and I think that’s still a problem.

UUID=c2f92357-b8f2-441f-8c99-eb076d5bcb9a /run/media/WD930 ext4 defaults 0 0

<fsck> sets the order for file system checks at boot time; see fsck(8). For the root device it should be 1. For other partitions it should be 2, or 0 to disable checking.

From the wiki it seems like it should be okay for the to be “0” so I have something to figure out yet.

this thread seems to address it How do I change ownership for a hard disk?

WHOOP THERE IT IS
sudo chown -R xiaohan:xiaohan /run/media/WD930/

hmmm last thing that looks wrong is that it seems to have a complete linux file tree of its own as if it were a main or boot drive