11.4 fstab entries for CD/DVD (and floppy) Drives will not mount them after 11.4 install or upgrade

After installing 11.4 my fstab entries for CD and DVD drives as well as floppy generate errors when I try to mount them automatically or via Nautilus when inserting CD or DVD. The icons and CD/DVD name show up ok but will not mount.

Manually mounting via terminal command works, but I would appreciate very much any useful assistance to help solve the problem.

Here are the relevant lines from fstab


/dev/scd0 		/media/cdrom0 	     auto       noauto,rw, user,exec 							0 0
/dev/scd1 		/media/cdrom1 	     auto       noauto,rw, user,exec 							0 0
/dev/fd0 		/media/fd0 	     auto       noauto,rw, user,sync 							0 0
Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 1: helper failed with:
[mntent]: line 10 in /etc/fstab is bad
[mntent]: line 11 in /etc/fstab is bad
[mntent]: line 12 in /etc/fstab is bad
mount: can't find /dev/sr0 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

In /dev scd0 and scd1 are symlinks pointing to sr0 and sr1 respectively. The above error message was generated after attempting to load a CD in scd0 i.e. my laptop internal CD/DVD drive. Lines 10,11 and 12 are the fstab lines quoted above.

Anyone know how to solve this?

Prior to 11.4 my fstab entries worked fine… :’(

smudger

When using openSUSE 11.4, as far as I know, there is no good reason to place an optical drive into your fstab file. I have no such entries and my optical drives can be used to play a movie, play an audio CD, burn a CD or DVD and view a DATA CD or DVD. I suggest you would remove these entries and can still perform all tasks as required. I have a message thread on the naming of cdrom and DVD and its assignment to real drive hardware you can read about here:

Multimedia Optical Drive Naming (ie /dev/dvd & /dev/cdrom) Howto in opneSUSE

Now mounting the floppy drive is a different story and without regard to how ancient this is and the fact that Sony announced it is no longer making floppy disks, you must enable the floppy drive module in the kernel which is no longer installed by default. I think I would give up on using a floppy disk in openSUSE.

Thank You,

On 2011-07-29 14:16, smudgy wrote:

> Manually mounting via terminal command works, but I would appreciate
> very much any useful assistance to help solve the problem.

Automounting works without lines in fstab. Besides, it would be better if
for manual mount (fstab) you do not use /media, but /mnt. Another possible
problem is that you left an space after "rw, ".


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

I would remove all of those entries from the fstab file
They are NOT NEEDED
the two cd drives will auto mount
and the floppy MUST have modprob ran on it


su -
modprobe floppy

the drive should go ziizzziz
if not then mount it
" mount /dev/fd0 /media/fd0 "

BUT
on an old computer that has a 3.5 floppy and two cd only drives I would not even try and run OpenSUSE
CentOS6 or ScientificLinux 6.1 would be better .
also they will run much faster on that old hardware.

I have SL6.1 32 bit on a old 10 year old box
it boots faster and runs a bit faster that a NEW i5 64 bit with 8 gig ram running suse11.3

Thanks for the input everyone.

Yes, it looks as if 11.4 no longer requires these entries and the updater neither checks this nor warns the user. I reckon it ought to do one or the other myself and would be inclined to think it is a bug.

I’ve removed the fstab entries and corresponding mount directories in /media

One question is about where to put mount directories for things like USB keys and external or removable drives? I have them in /media for some reason but why is it better to move them to /mnt (and edit the change in fstab)?

smudger

Thanks for the input everyone.

Yes, it looks as if 11.4 no longer requires these entries and the updater neither checks this nor warns the user. I reckon it ought to do one or the other myself and would be inclined to think it is a bug.

I’ve removed the fstab entries and corresponding mount directories in /media

One question is about where to put mount directories for things like USB keys and external or removable drives? I have them in /media for some reason but why is it better to move them to /mnt (and edit the change in fstab)?

smudger

openSUSE auto mounts hard drives and thumb drives and DVD’s and so forth in the folder /media and then uses their disk label as in /media/disk_label. So, it is suggested that you create or use a different folder for any manual mounting or for entries you do make in fstab. Mounting things in /media manually or in your fstab file can upset the auto mounting process. Consider that NTFS and FAT32 partitions, assumed to be for Windows, are set in the folders named /windows/C or /windows/D. I use such folder names as /Windows, /Software, /Multimedia and /DataSafe, just to name a few. You can create these as root and mount to them manually or create them using the YaST Partitioner whom will add them automatically to your fstab file and create the folder name if it does not exist.

Thank You,

On 2011-08-01 12:46, smudgy wrote:

> One question is about where to put mount directories for things like
> USB keys and external or removable drives? I have them in /media for
> some reason but why is it better to move them to /mnt (and edit the
> change in fstab)?

Let the system use /media for the automatics, and use /mnt for whatever you
mount manually. No interference between both.

Notice that the system will normally not mount automatically a device if it
is listed in fstab. This has been so for a long time, with some quirks.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)