Mounted filesystem not mounted

I manually mount a filesystem.
OS reports it is mounted.
‘df’ says it’s not mounted.
Why?
(all too repeatable)

user@MM:~> df /run/media/user/backup
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 49307368 2376 49304992 1% /run
user@MM:~> sudo mount -v /dev/sdc1 /run/media/user/backup
mount: /dev/sdc1 mounted on /run/media/user/backup.
user@MM:~> df /run/media/user/backup
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 49307368 2376 49304992 1% /run

“sudo” means that, the user “root” has mounted the file-system and, the user “root” controls ALL access to that file system because, the user “root” “owns” that mount point.
[HR][/HR]The default openSUSE settings in the Linux “Policy-Kit” are enforcing the way in which mounted file-systems may be accessed by the users on any particular machine.
If you were to use the user “root” to do things with the file-system which you mounted via the “sudo mount” CLI command, you would discover that actually everything is working perfectly but, only for the user “root”.
[HR][/HR]Possibly solution:

  • The “normal” user GUIs (KDE or Gnome or Xfce or whatever) offer a GUI method for a user to mount a file-system (which will then be accessible ONLY
    for THAT user). - Take a look at the automount functionality.

> If you were to use the user “root” to do things with the file-system which you mounted via the “sudo mount” CLI command, you would discover that actually everything is working perfectly but, only for the user “root”.

I repeated the command sequence. If you are correct, I can ‘su’ and see the file system. I still do not see the file system.

I would love to automount the file system. The problem is I have 5 rotating external hard drives for backup. I would like them to mount to the same location, regardless of UUID. Automount does not like this.

Thank you for responding.

What is the external drive interface? – USB? FireWire? SATA?

USB 3, MyBook, 3t

Linux 3.16.7-35-desktop, openSUSE 13.2 (Harlequin) (x86_64), KDE Platform Version: 4.14.9
Taking the case of a USB2 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. My Passport 1TB. [But, Linux-only: single ext4 partition.] >:)
With a normal user after the drive has been plugged in to the USB port:


 > lsusb
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 1058:071a Western Digital Technologies, Inc. My Passport 1TB
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1307:0330 Transcend Information, Inc. 63-in-1 Multi-Card Reader/Writer
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 046a:0023 Cherry GmbH CyMotion Master Linux Keyboard G230
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 046d:c01d Logitech, Inc. MX510 Optical Mouse
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 > 
 > dmesg | tail
[22736.956208] scsi 9:0:0:1: Enclosure         WD       SES Device       2011 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
[22736.956600] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] 976717824 512-byte logical blocks: (500 GB/465 GiB)
[22736.960362] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Write Protect is off
[22736.960375] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Mode Sense: 2b 00 10 08
[22736.964213] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] No Caching mode page found
[22736.964218] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Assuming drive cache: write through
[22736.966187] ses 9:0:0:1: Attached Enclosure device
[22736.966301] ses 9:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg10 type 13
[22737.023980]  sdh: sdh1
[22737.034057] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Attached SCSI disk
 > 

The USB drive is available at /dev/sdh/. With the user “root” mount the thing:


 # mount -v /dev/sdh1 /run/media/xxx/
mount: /dev/sdh1 ist auf /run/media/xxx eingehängt.
 # 

With the user xxx ‘cd’ to /run/media/xxx/ and then down to a directory owned by the user ‘xxx’ (it’s ext4 and Linux file ownership and privileges):


 > pwd
/run/media/xxx/xxx/tmp/aaa
 > 
 > touch bbb
 > 
 > l
insgesamt 8
drwxr-xr-x  2 xxx users 4096 19. Aug 15:31 ./
drwxr-xr-t 10 xxx users 4096 19. Aug 15:30 ../
-rw-r--r--  1 xxx users    0 19. Aug 15:31 bbb
 > 

If you’re directly attaching external storage using USB,
Tyically today’s modern Linux systems should automatically recognize the newly connected device(using the udev subsystem), determine it’s type (mass storage) and mount automatically.
You shouldn’t need to manually mount.

Are you running a Desktop?
If you are, you should open the File Manager application provided by your Desktop (Typically Dolphin or PCMan), and you should see your USB connected storage.

I haven’t run df looking for USB storage (I haven’t had to), and I’m not sitting where I have access to USB storage at the moment, but I’d be surprised that your USB storage doesn’t show up. Try running df without any arguments, post the result if you don’t know what you are looking at

df

TSU

mount should show what is mounted at any given time.

df should show any mounted FS

I suggest “Linux-only” for at least 2 cases: A) USB hard-drives (usually ext4 but, XFS may also be a nice choice) and, B) DVD-RAM (always ext2 {no journal} – just mount it and use it).
[HR][/HR]The automounter should be able to handle a “/dev/sd?x” to “/run/media/$USER” or “/mnt/<device>” mount.
[HR][/HR]The advantage is, once these devices have been mounted, all the Linux UID/GID rules apply to the user-space being archived – file ownership and protection is preserved on the archive – ‘rsync’ and ‘cp --archive’ work as expected – file restoration is simple.
And, if the automount mechanism is used, backups and archiving can automated with simple shell scripts.

Problem solved.

I was executing the partition manager correctly and it was updating fstab. This would work for the existing drive, but plugging in a different drive did nothing.

The fstab is set up to mount /dev/sdc1 to a backup directory.

The link I was missing was to do a systemd restart on automount. (or a reboot)

All is well now. Thanks to all who contributed.