Stacking "disk" in /media

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1

Hey guys, another puzzling one for ya.

So, as you know, I’m running OpenSUSE 11.1, and I’m using the Nautilus file browser. I recently decided to throw another old HDD in to get information off that one, and haven’t yet gotten around to doing anything with it yet.

Here’s my problem. The first night I turned the machine on with all 3 HDDs in place, it took a bit of fudging with settings, but I got it to work. However, I’m thinking something might be very wrong with /etc/fstab. I decided to check /media tonight because something just didn’t look quite right, and lo and behold! I seem to have TWELVE “disk” entries, from “disk” to “disk-11.”

This is the contents of /fstab… if it helps at all…

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD400BB-00DEA0_WD-WMAD12119715-part5 swap                 swap       defaults              0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD400BB-00DEA0_WD-WMAD12119715-part1 /                    ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD400BB-00DEA0_WD-WMAD12119715-part6 /home                ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2000JB-00GVA0_WD-WMAL81189945-part1 /windows/C           ntfs-3g   defaults 0 0 users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults              0 0
sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto                0 0
debugfs              /sys/kernel/debug    debugfs    noauto                0 0
usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto                0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0
#/dev/sdb1 /windows/C ntfs-3g umask=0000,uid=1000,gid=1000,auto,ro,nouser,noexec 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /windows/C ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

Keep in mind, for the last 2 lines I’m still workin on my previous post (look it up if you wanna help out with that one) but other than that, I haven’t futzed with it in quite a while. I got it working way back when, and just decided to let sleeping dogs lie, as it were.

Anyone know why I’m getting more and more stacked entries in /media?

If this helps any, I’ll “code” the folder list I currently have in /media…

disk
disk-1
disk-2
disk-3
disk-4
disk-5
disk-6
disk-7
disk-8
disk-9
disk-10
disk-11
ipod
MPC1009
Please_Teacher *this is an anime series a buddy sent me, disk got scratched to hell*
SU1110.001
UDISK
UDISK_
usb1
xmms_audio_cd

Something seems very, very messed up here… I may not know much about Linux, but I do know enough to know that I shouldn’t have 20 folders in /media! HELP?! :beat-up::confused:

2

Nothing is wrong.

Tell me: is sdb1
the same as
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2000JB-00GVA0_WD-WMAL81189945-part1 /windows/C

I hope not.

Because they would be duplicates. If they are # out the original entry
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2000JB-00GVA0_WD-WMAL81189945-part1 /windows/C

Is sdb1 the added HD?
If not - we need to see the result of fdisk -l

The entries in /media are temp folders for disks that are being mounted that have no set mount point and no disk label. So I suspect that sdb is not the added drive. But I await your reply

3

/media/disk is the mount point used when an unlabeled external drive (flash or HD) is plugged in. If the system thinks that /media/disk is in use, then it uses the next name. It looks like the system didn’t notice previous unmounts and you accumulated a whole bunch of unused mount points. I don’t know if this is a glitch.

In any case you might want to give your drive a label so that you get a mountpoint that you can identify.

4

caf:
In response to query for fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00044df7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         851     6835626   83  Linux
/dev/sda2             852        4865    32242455    5  Extended
/dev/sda5             852        1024     1389591   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            1025        4865    30852801   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x028b028b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1       24320   195350368+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2           24321       24321        8032+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5b6ac646

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *           1        8406    67513162    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdc2            8406       14593    49705079    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdc5            8406        8502      779121   83  Linux

As far as to whether or not sdb1 is the duplicate of /windows/C, before I put the third drive in, I had to go into terminal and do

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /windows/C

in order to gain access to it, so I believe yeah, sdb1 would be Windows/C.

Re:usb, I’ve actually been having problems lately with that too, with it not recognizing a USB stick that I transfer between home and school… school uses Windows XP or Vista and I’m using Suse. I know SUSE uses ext, and I believe 'doze uses NTFS or some version of FAT, but I don’t remember correctly…

The drive that I have had installed for quite a while, with all my music on it (not the one I just recently put in) is the /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2000JB-00GVA0_WD-WMAL81189945-part1.

ken_yap:
Can you tell me how I would go about creating a label that both Windows and Linux would be comfortable working with?

5

It’s just a standard FAT filesystem label. You can do it with mlabel, from the mtools package. E.g.

mlabel -i /dev/sdb1 ::

and it will prompt you.

6

Thank you ken, I’ll give that a shot.

As far as the folders in /media go, can you give me any more advice/help? I think it would make it a lot easier if I were to go in and delete a handful of folders so I’m not getting confused about what’s located where… but when I do that would I have to go in and edit /etc/fstab as well? I know a very little bit about fstab, but only to the point that I know if I don’t put something in the right way, it’s not going to work how I need it to.

Oh, and I’m now up to disks 12 and 13… One other interesting tidbit for ya too, if it helps or not… aside from the last 2 disks, ipod, usb1 and xmms_audio_cd, all folders are locked to me, I can only access them via root. Is this going to cause any problems if I go in as root and delete the locked ones? They all have a big red box with a white “X” in it.

Thanks for the rapid replies, and let me know if you need anything else, I will try to get that information as soon as I can.

7

I think you can just go ahead and delete them if nothing is mounted. I don’t know how your system ended thinking disk was already mounted and went on to the next name.

fstab doesn’t come into it at all, these are mountpoints dynamically created when flash memory or external disks are plugged in.

8

Thanks. Thing is though, that all three drives mount automatically at boot… I’m assuming I’d have to unmount them before going in and deleting folders?

As far as fstab goes, and flash memory for that matter, my USB drive hasn’t wanted to mount at all. I can plug it in and wait for half an hour, and nothing. It’s shown in lsusb, but I can’t seem to access anything nor can I find it. Maybe that ties into this? If I remember correctly, first post lists some sort of USB in the output of what I have.

Also, how does this issue affect disk usage on the root drive? I had a problem a ways back with an 8GB drive that no matter what I deleted, within 3 days I was completely out of disk space… I had maybe 3MB left. I’m really not relishing the thought of going back and doing a completely clean install… got too much stuff on my 40 and no optical burner to help back stuff up, and can’t seem to transfer anything to the new drives.

Sorry if this just keeps getting frustrating, but I do appreciate the help.

9

Just pull out those flash drives before deleting the folder. It won’t let you rmdir the folder if it contains something anyway. I’m talking about only the folders called /media/disk*. If you have any permanently mounted drives they belong in fstab and should have mountpoints somewhere else.

Shouldn’t have any bearing on your root drive space, that’s a different issue. Better start another thread for that.

10

Thanks for the tip on rmdir; for the time being, I’ve decided to, once a week, su and go into /media, then just rmdir all directories. Since you mentioned that it won’t let me delete a folder in use, I just go through and delete all folders one at a time. If I hit the two folders in use, I won’t be able to delete them anyway, so I said screw it. Right now, with college, relationship and bein a daddy to a little one, I don’t have time to be puzzling through this one anyway.

What I’m probably gonna end up doing, at least hopefully soon, is just gonna be to completely format one of the Windows drives (probably the bigger one) then drag+drop all files from both other drives into appropriate folders, then do a clean re-install, and update as soon as its up and running.

Just thought I’d pop in here and give a quick update on that one; one question though. What’s the policy here re:necroposting? If I end up having this same issue again, later on say 6 months down the road, can I pop back in here and restart the thread, or do I need to make a seperate post for the new duplicate issue? Thanks for the replies and the help.

11

I’m not entitled to speak for anybody but there isn’t any policy really, nobody is going to knock on your door in the small hours of the morning and drag you off to a gulag for necroposting. :slight_smile: I think common sense is all that’s needed.

If you started the thread and it’s still the same problem, then by all means post a follow-up. Or if you wish, start a new thread and insert a link to the old thread.

Moving away from your specific case for the moment: What is counterproductive are the postings by people who have found a thread about a problem that’s vaguely similar to theirs and then they add a “me too”. Not only does this confuse readers but the posters risk their question being ignored. E.g. the title might be “problem with WEP”, very generic. The first time this appears, people have a look and have a go at answering the question. But if 2 years later somebody adds something to the thread, it’s likely to be passed by.

So I would say, when in doubt, start a new thread. Threads are not a finite resource. I don’t think I have ever seen anybody being chastised for starting a new thread, if the problem is genuinely new. And even if not, usually the worst that happens is that a link to the solution is posted as the answer.

Thanks for updating us and have a lot of fun with openSUSE in any case.