Fstab for FAT HDD

dennisjanssen · 18 March 2016 13:24

Okay, I’ve been using a FAT32 hard drive for a while now, always just using the automatically mounted one in /media. However, I used to run in quite a few problems after rebooting my RPi, I had to restart my HDD to mount it again. I read throughout these forums that setting a correct fstab line would solve all this and more, but I’ve been running into trouble getting the correct flags.

Here’s my fstab line so far:
UUID=3E31-1AF7 /mnt/1TB-DISK vfat defaults,noauto,gid=1000,uid=1000,umask=002 0 0

I got there gathering bits and pieces throughout the forum, but I just can’t seem to get it to work. I added the ‘noauto’ flag because it got me errors while booting, but now it’s no longer mounting. Also get permission issues when using Transmission… Anyway, long story short: has anyone with a FAT HDD managed to get the ideal fstab line? Or is it a lost cause and should I just format the drive to a Linux format?

Thanks!

fzinken · 18 March 2016 13:54

Where have you read that? I can not think that having an fstab line would make it more likely for your hdd to be mounted verrsus the auto mounter. Suggest better to find out why the auto mounter doesn’t work for you.

“noauto” means it will not mount automatically when you but but you would need to manually mount it with mount /mnt/1TB-DISK which I assume is the opposite of what you want to reach with the fstab entry.

As I mentioned at the beginning let’s find out why it is not automatically mounting. Remove the fstab line, reboot and then upload logs with grab-logs -A.

My best guess why it is not mounting is either a power problem or the drive taking to long to spin up.
Is the drive powered by it own power supply or via the USB of the RPi? If it is powered from the RPi is your power supply powerful enough and have you added max_usb_current=1 to /boot/config.txt?

dennisjanssen · 18 March 2016 14:08

Hm, I’m not sure where I read it, just someone of the forums here saying it would be more stable with an fstab entry. Might have been a really really old post though…

But okay, I’ll try reverting it all and check the logs when it loses the HDD again.

The HDD has its own power supply, so that should be okay. I’m not sure why it happens, but sometimes when I boot it, it has no HDD connection, then it starts downloading things in a folder it made itself, etc etc. It’s quite a hassle to undo when it happens. But thanks for your suggestions, I’ll try it like you mentioned, hope I can find something in the logs about the automount.

Toast · 18 March 2016 15:02

Just because someone says its a good idea doesn’t make it true

DBMandrake · 19 March 2016 13:24

Try:

UUID=3E31-1AF7 /mnt/1TB-DISK vfat defaults,noauto,x-systemd.automount,gid=1000,uid=1000,fmask=0111,dmask=0000 0 0

I don’t think umask is valid for a vfat file system type, and without x-systemd.automount it will not mount automatically on boot. fmask=0111 and dmask=0000 is what we use for vfat partitions in the automounter:

github.com

osmc/osmc/blob/master/package/diskmount-osmc/files/etc/udisks-glue.conf#L61


      
          			count=120
          			while [ $count -gt 0 ]; do
          				if sudo /usr/bin/net usershare add "$(basename "%mount_point")" "%mount_point" "Auto-mount Volume" "$(hostname -s)\osmc:r"
          					then break
          				fi
          			sleep 5; let count-=5
          			done
          		fi'
          
          
	post_unmount_command = '
          		if [ -f /usr/bin/net ]; then
          			sudo /usr/bin/net usershare delete "$(basename "%mount_point")"
          		fi
          		/usr/bin/eject %device_file'
          }
          
          
match optical-other {
          	automount = true
          	automount_options = { 'mode=0444','dmode=0555','uid=1000','gid=1000' }
          
          
	post_mount_command = '

dennisjanssen · 20 March 2016 21:24

So far so good with the built-in mounting, but definitely giving this a try should it stop working at some point. Haven’t run into any crashes yet (those usually seem to happen when Transmission gets a little too busy), and that’s when it usually happens. I’ll check into the logs then and try this fstab-entry!

But thanks for all your help, definitely appreciated.

dennisjanssen · 31 March 2016 19:15

Okay, so I’ve made some progress on finding the problem I guess. It seems like the RPi gets stuck whenever it’s downloading something from Transmission straight to the HDD. If I reboot at that time, it doesn’t mount automatically. Now I’ve been checking the logs when I boot and even when it doesn’t mount automatically, there’s not much in the logs about mounting anything. However, during downloading I am seeing a lot of these:
mrt 31 21:04:15 osmc kernel: usb 1-1.3: reset high-speed USB device number 4 using dwc_otg mrt 31 21:04:46 osmc kernel: usb 1-1.3: reset high-speed USB device number 4 using dwc_otg
Followed by these:
mrt 31 21:07:23 osmc kernel: blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 1682670692 mrt 31 21:07:23 osmc kernel: Buffer I/O error on dev sda1, logical block 1682670690, lost async page write

My best guess is that the USB connection drops out every few dozen seconds, creating corrupt files in the process and probably not giving the healthiest drive to mount at boot… Now, the HDD does have it’s own power supply, so I don’t think the RPi is underpowered. Or is it? Does anybody have a clue why it could be doing this?

bmillham · 1 April 2016 01:18

I’d suggest trying a different USB drive, looks like that one may be failing. But first, try a different USB cable, you may be lucky and it’s just the cable is failing.