mounting drives - newbie

[louis-m]

Hello all,
i am just starting out in linux and am a little confused about mounting drives.
on my fedora pc, i have 2 x hard drives.
when i originally installed the os, i had 1 drive with the default partitioning.
i placed all my data into /var/files and had various folders under there eg music, video, docs etc

it didn't take long for this to fill up. so i added a 2nd drive and mounted it as /var/files which increased the space for all the folders in that directory.
so my fstab has:

sda1 /
sdb1 /var/files

now its filling up again and i want to add a 3rd drive. but this time, i want to seperate my music from my video's etc but still keep the share under /var/files

so, do i add the 3rd drive, mount it as /var/files/music1, then transfer the music files from /var/files/music to /var/files/music1 and once the transfer is complete, delete /var/files/music, rename /var/files/music1 to /var/files/music and then mount sdc1 to/var/files/music?

the bit i can't get my head around is the mount within a mount:
sdb1 /var/files is mounting everything under it including /music
if i add sdc1 /var/files/music how does it affect the mount point of sdb1

am i better putting the /music under /var/music instead of /var/files?

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

It will be really confusing if you keep on mounting partition one under another like nested environment.

Why are you mounting partition of music files under /var/files? Why not standard location like /media/ or /mnt?

It better to mount all partition under /media/ to keep track of everything.

[louis-m]

Hi,
as this was my first shot at linux, I tried an easy version first - amahi.
problem with it is, it stores it's data in /var/hda/files/<shares> eg docs, video, music etc.
Now I know I don't have to stick to their specified storage locations etc but they have a lot of pluggins which default to those locations and possibly some that can't be changed (although I'm not sure about the latter)

but while I'm here, what is best practice for mounting:

sdb1 /media/music
sdb1 /media/video

OR

sdb1 /media with music & video directories

and what do I do if I want to add another drive to expand what I store in those directories?

[devils casper]

You should not mount same partition sdb1 at two different locations, /media/music and video.
Create a folder /media/sdb1 and mount /dev/sdb1 there only. Create folders inside /media/sdb1 for music and video.

Could you post the output of fdisk -l and df -h commands?

su -
/sbin/fdisk -l
df -h

* Its small L in fdisk -l.

[louis-m]

apologies for late reply. been on vacation. here is the output as requested:

/sbin/fdisk -l
**********

Disk /dev/sda: 12.9 GB, 12884901888 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1566 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0007e3db

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 26 204800 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 26 1566 12374063+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 107.4 GB, 107374182400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 13054 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe8cc095f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 13054 104856223+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/dm-0: 10.6 GB, 10552868864 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1282 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 2113 MB, 2113929216 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 257 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
[root@hda ~]# Disk /dev/sda: 12.9 GB, 12884901888 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1566 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0007e3db

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 26 204800 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 26 1566 12374063+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 107.4 GB, 107374182400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 13054 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
-bash: Disk: command not found
Disk identifier: 0xe8cc095f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 13054 104856223+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/dm-0: 10.6 GB, 10552868864 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1282 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 2113 MB, 2113929216 bytes
[root@hda ~]# 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1566 cylinders
-bash: 255: command not found
[root@hda ~]# Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

df -h
****

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg_hda-lv_root
9.7G 5.7G 3.6G 62% /
tmpfs 503M 0 503M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 194M 58M 127M 32% /boot
/dev/sdb1 99G 89G 5.0G 95% /var/hda/files
funionfs 99G 89G 5.0G 95% /var/hda/apps/ushare/files

[devils casper]

/dev/sdb1 has been mounted at /var/hda/files mount point. Create /media/sdb1 folder. Open /etc/fstab file and replace /var/hda/files with /media/sdb1.
Execute mount -a command to remount partition.

[louis-m]

Thanks for the prompt reply.
the problem is that /var/hda/files is full of files with various programs point towards them.
i was thinking of adding the new hard drive and creating a mount point as you have said, copying the files from where they are to the new mount and then remounting /var/hda/files as something else.

[neildomo]

You can mount your disks wherever you like, then use soft links to cover your tracks. If you mount a disk under /media/sda, but are worried that some app will look for /var/hda/files, then

sudo ln -s /media/sda /var/hda/files

When some looks down the path /var/hda/files they will see whatever is in /media/sda, and everyone is happy.

[neildomo]

BTW, looks like your hostname is "hda" ? I would discourage you from naming servers after application names or computer terminology like "hda". It will end up confusing/annoying someone.