Understanding all the tutorials here, but cannot add 2 drives to fstab

[Jaqueline]

I am on Linux 6.12.41-1-MANJARO (x86_64), nothing encrypted, no RAID etc. and I have a question about adding an additional internal drive to my computer. Although I have read the tutorials, like this:

[Tutorial] Working with additional 'drives'

Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆ 1. INTRODUCTION Microsoft Windows started its life as a graphical user interface on top of MS-DOS, a 16-bit single-user, single-tasking operating system that in turn originated as 86DOS, an unauthorized 16-bit rewrite (by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer) of Digital Research’s originally 8-bit CP/M operating system. Both CP/M and MS-DOS were at the time developed for computers that did not support any other storage media than floppy disks. Considering this legacy, Microsof…

or discussions like this:

Issue with fstab data drive mounting

Not sure if this is the right place this seems like a general question but didn’t see anywhere that would fit. I have a extra drive I wanted to use as general storage but when trying to add it to /etc/fstab it won’t boot and I get the error below when testing using sudo mount -a. The drive will mount fine without my edits to fstab if I just mount it by clicking it through file manager. Here it is after I’ve mounted it from file manager just to make sure I had the mount point right. [andy@manj…

I could not insert the correct line in fstab.

My luck to find the nofail option, so that I don’t have to repair fstab form a live system after each trying.

Manjaro is running on a nvme drive of total 2 TB (nvme0n1p1, p2, p3). And there is a 500 GB partition on this nvme (nvme0n1p4) labeled “VBox-VMs”, which is formatted with ext4 and which should now be mounted by fstab. Further there is a harddisk of 6 TB labeled “Intermediate”, which should also be mounted by fstab.

I tried my very best to follow the tuturials and all the valuable infos here, but I had no success. After having inserted the line for the new drive in fstab and then try:

sudo findmnt -x --vfs-all                                        ✔ 
/home/clemens/Intermediate
   [W] unerreichbare Quelle: UUID-db44e8d2-5fa8-43a1-940a-970484529933: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
   [W] Dateisystemtyp auf der Platte kann nicht erkannt werden(Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden)

I don’t think, that the mount point is the problem, because I have tried two different:

/home/VBox-VMs
/home/jaqueline/VBox-VMs

At the first sample, I have of course set the directory to me as owner. I prefer the second sample of course.
Both drives, I want to get mounted by fstab can be mounted manually in Thunar like any external drive and all data is accessible then.

This is my fstab and the last two lines are belonging to the two drives. I have commented them out in order to get no problems, although I have set the option to nofail of course.

# <file system>             <mount point>  <type>  <options>  <dump>  <pass>
UUID=888D-F3BF                            /boot/efi      vfat    defaults,umask=0077 0 2
UUID=340b5cb5-bc7b-4a3c-8274-46c2eea878da swap           swap    defaults   0 0
UUID=2aad5a62-915e-4075-b0d8-a517302e3547 /              btrfs   subvol=/@,defaults,noatime,space_cache=v2,compress=zstd:6 0 0
UUID=2aad5a62-915e-4075-b0d8-a517302e3547 /home          btrfs   subvol=/@home,defaults,noatime,space_cache=v2,compress=zstd:6 0 0
UUID=2aad5a62-915e-4075-b0d8-a517302e3547 /var/cache     btrfs   subvol=/@cache,defaults,noatime,space_cache=v2,compress=zstd:6 0 0
UUID=2aad5a62-915e-4075-b0d8-a517302e3547 /var/log       btrfs   subvol=/@log,defaults,noatime,space_cache=v2,compress=zstd:6 0 0
tmpfs                                     /tmp           tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
# UUID-5b578c12-7401-47a4-857a-c9cfac7ce47b /home/jaqueline/VBox-VMs ext4    defaults,nofail 0 0
# UUID-db44e8d2-5fa8-43a1-940a-970484529933 /home/jaqueline/Intermediate btrfs defaults,noatime,nofail,noexec 0 0

The mount points are empty directories in /home/jaqueline/

What am I doing wrong here?

[Takakage]

@Jaqueline

UUID-5b578c12-7401-47a4-857a-c9cfac7ce47b

UUID- typo?

UUID=5b578c12-7401-47a4-857a-c9cfac7ce47b

[Aragorn]

@Jaqueline

sudo findmnt -x --vfs-all                                        ✔ 
/home/clemens/Intermediate
   [W] unerreichbare Quelle: UUID-db44e8d2-5fa8-43a1-940a-970484529933: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
   [W] Dateisystemtyp auf der Platte kann nicht erkannt werden(Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden)

I had to use Google translate for that.

• Tip: Prefix your commands with LANG=C if you want to paste the output here, so that it will be in English.

Either way, /home/clemens is not the same thing as /home/jaqueline, so the first error message is telling you that it cannot find the specified file or directory, while the second error message is saying that the filesystem type you specified for the Intermediate partition is not correct. And that is probably because of…

---

@Takakage

@Jaqueline

UUID-5b578c12-7401-47a4-857a-c9cfac7ce47b

UUID- typo?

UUID=5b578c12-7401-47a4-857a-c9cfac7ce47b

Indeed.

[Nachlese]

What / which drives are you trying to add?

/etc/fstab shows two partitions commented out - ignored, essentially
… and no = (equal sign) - but a - instead …
That would not/could not work when they where uncommented.

lsblk -f
shows what is there - then you should know which is which …
and what you want to add where

[soundofthunder]

@Jaqueline

What am I doing wrong here?

Well, there is this for a start:

@Jaqueline

# UUID-5b578c12-7401-47a4-857a-c9cfac7ce47b /home/jaqueline/VBox-VMs ext4    defaults,nofail 0 0
# UUID-db44e8d2-5fa8-43a1-940a-970484529933 /home/jaqueline/Intermediate btrfs defaults,noatime,nofail,noexec 0 0

@Nachlese

/etc/fstab shows two partitions commented out
…
and no = (equal sign) - but a - instead

Correct that and post your full (and corrected) fstab output again, and we can discuss your options some more.

Also tell us whether or not those corrections solved the issue, or any part of it.

Regards.

[Jaqueline]

I am sorry, I have been too stressed in the past 14 days and there were demanding tasks at the same time.
Yes I have had a typo after UUID to set "="

But there were some more bugs in my lines:

1. I should use PARTUUID for defining the ext4 partition, as it is the third partition on the same drive
2. I should use the UUID of the partition and not that one of the drive

And yes, in the first quote of my fstab, I had used “clemens” instead of “jaqueline”, because I have copied this from a friend of mine, when we discussed about it. But he also has overlooked, that I had a typo concerning the equal sign.

Actually and finally all is up and working, as I wanted.

I thank you so much for your advice and your patience with me! – Further I promise, first to calm down, take some relaxing time, checking again and then I could ask here again, instead of asking here in a desperate mood.

Thank you!

[dmt]

@Jaqueline

My luck to find the nofail option, so that I don’t have to repair fstab form a live system after each trying.

You don’t have to reboot - you can test using sudo mount -a followed by lsblk (or lsblk -f).

@Jaqueline

I should use the UUID of the partition and not that one of the drive

Yes.

[Jaqueline]

Thank you!