How to mount a partition in Linux

Unlike Windows and MS-DOS, in Linux, in addition to not having a letter assignment -a B C D E:- for disk drives and partitions, you need to tell the system when a removable disk drive will be used to access it and when it will be discontinued so that it can be removed and replaced. Once the disk drives are configured in the system, you will need to know some methods and shortcuts to quickly mount and unmount them.

Preparations for mounting

Before mounting the partition, we must create a folder where we are going to mount it. It is usually done in /half/ (/ Mnt in some distributions), so it is recommended that we create it there:

sudo mkdir / media / lalala

Where lalala is the name that the folder will have, we can assign it whatever we want.

If the filesystem of the partition that we are going to mount is NTFS (used by operating systems Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Media Center, Windows 2003 Server, Windows Vista and Windows 2007 Server), then it is recommended to install the controller ntfs-3g in order to have write support on that partition:

sudo aptitude install ntfs-3g

If instead the file system is UFS2 (used by most operating systems based on BSDas NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and its derivatives), then before mounting the partition we will have to load the kernel module into memory ufs:

sudo modprobe ufs

To avoid having to load it every time the system starts, we can edit the file / etc / modules:

gksudo gedit / etc / modules

And add the following line before 'loop':

ufs

Partition mounting

Now we are going to mount the partition in the created folder. This means that the contents of the partition will appear in that folder. The command to mount disks and / or partitions is mount, and is used as follows:

$ sudo mount -t filesystem [-or Options] / dev /partition mount_folder

It should be noted that if an error occurs during mounting, the partition data will not be compromised, it will simply not be mounted.

Parameters

The meaning of the parameters used in the command mount are the following:

• filesystem: is the file system of the partition; can be vfat (FAT16 y FAT32), ntfs (NTFS) or ufs (UFS y UFS2); there are other possible values, but they are not covered in this article. Yes it is ufs, then we must indicate the options in a mandatory way ro y ufstype (the latter in case of being UFS2).

• options: are the mount options, it can take more than one value, in that case the values ​​are separated with commas (,). Some possible values ​​are defaults (default values), ro (Read Only, that is, Read Only) and ufstype (to specify the type of UFS filesystem, in case this is used); if no special options are specified, we can write defaults, or ignore this parameter entirely (also removing the -o from ahead). In this article, we will use this parameter only for mounting partitions UFS y UFS2, and for mounting at system startup (see heading Mounting at system startup).

• partition: is the identifier of the partition that we are going to mount; can be hdXY in case of being a disc IDE o ATA: sdX, Y in case of being SATA; The X is the letter of the hard disk (a for the first, b for the second, etc.) and the Y is the partition number (1 for the first, 2 for the second, etc.). If we want to know the name of the partitions we have on the computer, just run the following command:

$sudo fdisk -l

• mount_folder: is the folder where the partition will be mounted, that is, where the data (files and folders) of the partition will appear; in most cases it is within /half/, although it may be anywhere else (see heading Preparations for mounting).

Concrete examples

To mount a partition FAT16 o FAT32:

sudo mount -t vfat / dev /partition /half/mount_folder

To mount a partition NTFS:

sudo mount -t ntfs / dev /partition /half/mount_folder

To mount a partition UFS:

sudo mount -t ufs -o ro / dev /partition /half/mount_folder

To mount a partition UFS2:

sudo mount -t ufs -o ro, ufstype = ufs2 / dev /partition /half/mount_folder

To mount a partition where Ubuntu is:

sudo mount / dev /partition /half/mount_folder

Mounting at system startup

Once we have managed to mount the partition, it will remain mounted while the system is running. When we restart or turn off the computer, we will have to remount the partition. If we want it to be mounted every time we start the system, we will need to modify the file / etc / fstab:

$ sudo gedit / etc / fstab

Here it has been used gEdit, but any text editor can be used, such as Nano o Vim. It is convenient to use gksudo o kdesu instead of sudo to start an editor in graphical mode; the first is for the desktop GNOME and the second for KDE.

Once the file is open, we have to change the line that begins with the identifier of the partition that we have mounted (/ dev / hdXY o / dev / sdXY) by the following:

/ dev /partition /half/mount_folder filesystem Options 0 0

If that line does not exist, we add it to the end of the file.

The arguments are the same as when we use the command mount. Here, if in options we do not use any value, we will have to write defaults, and we would have something like this:

/ dev /partition /half/mount_folder filesystem defaults 0 0

If it is a partition FAT16 o FAT32 and it doesn't work for us defaults, we can try the following options:

auto, users, exec, umask = 000

defaults, rw, user, auto, umask = 0

With the latter, read, write and execute permissions are being given to all users. If we want to restrict these permissions only to a particular group of users (for example: users), the options should look like this:

defaults, rw, user, auto, umask = 007, gid =group 0 0

Where group should be replaced by the user group, for example, users.
Finally, if for any reason some characters (such as the letter ñ), we must add the following option along with the others used, to change the character map:

iocharset = utf8

For example, a line could look like this:

/ dev / hda0 / media / hda0 vfat defaults, rw, user, auto, iocharset = utf8, umask = 000 0 0

To mount all devices listed in the file / etc / fstab we have to execute the following command in a terminal:

sudo mount -a

With this we already have our partition mounted every time Ubuntu is started.

Create a launcher to partition

Once we have mounted the partition, we verify that sometimes it can be uncomfortable to always access the folder / media / hdXY (or to which we have specified), to solve this we can do two things:

• Create a symbolic launcher in our folder home or in any other folder
• Create an icon on the desktop that directs us to the mounting folder

Symbolic launcher in / home

The first option is to create a symbolic launcher (they are like the shortcuts of Windows), for example in our personal folder home. With this we will be able to access the partition from this folder and without duplicating the information.

We write the following line in the terminal:

$ ln -s / media /mount_folder / home /user/destination_folder

Where mount_folder is the folder where we mount the partition, user is the name of our user in the system and destination_folder is the symbolic launcher that we will create to act as a mounting folder.

Icon on desktop

If what we want is to create an icon on the desktop, we must do the following:

In GNOME

1. We display the desktop context menu (right mouse button)
2. Select the option Create link
3. We choose the type Enlace
4. We fill in the blank fields with the required data
5. We accept for the link to be created

In KDE

1. We display the desktop context menu (right mouse button)
2. Select the option Create New -> Link to Device -> Hard Drive
3. In the General tab, we write the name of the icon
4. In the Device tab, we write the identifier of the partition (/ dev / hdXY)
5. We accept for the link to be created

Partition disassembly

If for any reason you want to unmount the partition, you just have to write this in terminal:

sudo umount binder

Where binder is the location of the folder where the partition is mounted (for example: / mean / hdaX).

Source: Ubuntu Guide