USB external ntfs drive. Command line vs thunar, fstab

Howdy,

I'm running Fluxbox on Gentoo.
I've got Thunar file manager, with the volman plugin.
I've got fuse as a kernel module, and ntfs support compiled in the kernel.
I've got fuse and ntsf-3g emerged.

I've got an external enclosure holding an ntfs harddrive connected via USB. It is not always turned on. It is called "data" and is generally on /dev/sdb1.

I can open up thunar with the drive turned on and click it on the left panel which auto-mounts it at /media/data, and the file /media/.hal-mtab looks like this:

Code:

---

/dev/sdb1        1000        0        ntfs-3g        nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,umask=0077,uid=1000        /media/data

---

Edit: Also, the line in my /etc/mtab

Code:

---

/dev/sdb1 /media/data fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=4096 0 0

---

All good so far.

Now when I try to mount it as root with

Code:

---

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /wherever/

---

(no I'm not trying to mount if when its already mounted btw...) I get a return saying ntsf-3g is not a known type. Whats wrong here?

Also, the /media/data folder is not always there. Does thunar mkdir this folder everytime before it automounts it and then rmdir after it unmounts? If the folder exists and thunar tries to mount it it goes to /media/_data. If I'm alternating mounting it between thunar and command line do I have to mkdir and rmdir this folder everytime at command line as well?

What if I want to put the mounting in fstab? Will fstab freak out if the driver isn't turned on during boot? if I turn it on later will fstab auto-mount it?

Hmmm...I think thats all I had.
Thanks!
Marc

I think the argument for -t should be 'ntfs' not 'ntfs-3g'. When you mount manually you can mount it wherever you want. I'm not sure how Gentoo works but I believe the /media folder is part of the virtual filesystem, not an actual folder on your hard drive. If you are manually mounting with fstab, I would suggest mkdir /mnt/yourdrive. I don't think fstab will "freak out" if it can't mount the drive at boot. Not sure if it will automount though.