13.2 Intall an additional hard drive for use as data ackup

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I’ve successfully installed 13.2 to my new computer. I wish to install a second hard drive so I can copy data to this drive for backup purposes. I’ve used the partitioner to create a primary partition and formatted it with XFS. Dolphin appears to have identified the disk but I can’t copy any data to it as Create New and Paste One Folder are greyed out on the menu.

Thank you in advance to anyone who can help.

Terry

2

A lot to guess here.

I guess you used YaST > System > Partitioner to do the partitioning, create the XFS file system and specify a mount point?

Then please give us an ls -dl of the mount point, like

ls -ld /the/mount/point

And with the “I” in “I can’t copy …” you mean a normal end-user?

3

You should be able to copy, etc., as root, but not from your User account, until:

You need to set the permissions.

As root, create a subdirectory for your User account, than chown it to your User account.

If unfamiliar with that process, from a command prompt, do:

chown --help
4

Thank you. Yes I used YaST > System > Partitioner to do the partitioning and create the XFS file system. I did not create a mount point which I guess may be my problem. Perhaps you could guide me on this and suggest a mount point? I am the only user (so I guess I am a normal end-user) and I can use the root password if necessary to access the disk when I want to copy data to it. If you can suggest a solution for me without using instrutions via a consol this would be safer for me. Many thanks.

5

The information you should know is here: https://en.opensuse.org/SDB%3ABasics_of_partitions,_filesystems,_mount_points

Specialy in your case is the fact that you should know for what usage you creted that partition. Thus when it is for the benifit of one user, you could mount it somewhere inside that user’s home directory (and then of coourse the mount point must either be created by the user himself, or created by root and made owned by the users afterwards. In any case Thcreation of the fstab entry must be done by root. (and using YaST > System > partitioner is a good way to do it.

When you have still no idea where to mount, you could use Fraser-Bell’s suggestion. It could be done like this (but alot of different solutions are possible):
YaST > System > Partitioner. select that partition and edit; Do NOT format it again (you did that already), but choose a mount point, I suggest /mnt/backup and finish that.

Then chheck if the partition is mounted with

mount | grep /mnt/backup

When this gives no line with information, first come back here for more help.

Then, assuming that the username of the end-user is terry, as root:

cd /mnt/backup
mkdir terrybackup
chown terry:users terrybackup

Now, as use terry you should be able to use /mnt/back/mntbackup for creating files ,etc. in it.
To make it more easy terry could create a symbolic link inside his home directory

ln -s /mnt/backup/terrybackup backup

And then you will see a directory naed backup in Dolphin (well, in Dolphin I guess you would call it a map) for terry’s use.

BTW, asking for help with no CLI is not very usefull. All of us can show you exactly what to do in the CLI (often copy/paste is possible), but describing what you should do in a GUI is a nightmare

6

Thank you very much I really appreciate your help. I used your suggestion of /mnt/backup and I can now access the disk. I have taken your suggestions on board and will study the SDB: Basics of partitions, filesystems, mount points.

Very best regards,

Terry Westmoreland

7

You are welcome.