Invalid mount option error

**alanrlow** · 10-29-2009

First the details. Running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) Gnome 2.26.1 on an Acer Aspire laptop. I have a 160gb drive with 4 partitions. A root, a separate home partition, a swap and the rest as a backup in ext3. My problem is I can't mount the backup drive from the desktop. I get an "Invalid mount option when attempting to mount the volume backup" If I fire up PCMan File Manager and try to mount it I get a similar result. If I then open the current folder as root (Tools/ open current folder as root) then I can mount and open the drive. If I check the File Properties (Alt+Return) and look at the permissions I see that I am both the owner and group so why can't I mount it normally? Once I have done this I can mount/unmount open the drive and use it as normal with no problems.
Anyone have any ideas how I can use the drive normally? I want to use the drive as the download location for my browser but without going through the above procedure I can't use it.
Thanks for any help.
Regards,
Alan.

**devils casper** · 10-29-2009

You have to give ownership of backup partition to Regular User.

Execute this as a Regular User :

Code:

id

Note down user and group ids of Regular User.
Execute this as root user :

Code:

sudo chown -R user_id:group_id <mount_point_of_backup_partition>

Let say mount point is /media/backup and User/group ids are sam/sam.
Command will be :

Code:

sudo chown -R sam:sam /media/backup

**alanrlow** · 10-30-2009

Originally Posted by devils casper

You have to give ownership of backup partition to Regular User.

Execute this as a Regular User :

Code:

id

Note down user and group ids of Regular User.
Execute this as root user :

Code:

sudo chown -R user_id:group_id <mount_point_of_backup_partition>

Let say mount point is /media/backup and User/group ids are sam/sam.
Command will be :

Code:

sudo chown -R sam:sam /media/backup

Thanks for the reply but no good I'm afraid. ID shows:

uid=1000(alan) gid=1000(alan) groups=4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdrom),29(audio),46(p lugdev),106(lpadmin),121(admin),127(sambashare),12 9(vboxusers),1000(alan),1001(usbusers)
alan@alan-laptop:~$

I see no mention of Regular User

If I execute:

alan@alan-laptop:~$ sudo chown -R alan:alan /media/Backup
chown: cannot access `/media/Backup': No such file or directory
alan@alan-laptop:~$

If I run that command in a terminal with the drive mounted, ie go into PCMan File Manager and open as root and mount it, I don't get any error message in fact I get no message.

I just want this partition treated like my home partition and be able to read and write to it normally. As it is every time I reboot or re-login I have to use PCMan File Manager to mount the partition before I can use it.
Any other ideas?
Cheers,
Alan.

**devils casper** · 10-30-2009

Regular user is alan only.

/media/Backup folder doesn't exist. Change ownership of correct mount_point (folder).
Check the contents of /etc/fstab file and note down mount point of ext3 partition. Execute chown command on that folder.

Code:

sudo chown -R alan:alan <correct_mount_point>

In case you can't figure out correct mount point, post the output of df -h command and contents of /etc/fstab file here.

Code:

df -h
cat /etc/fstab

**alanrlow** · 10-30-2009

Originally Posted by devils casper

Regular user is alan only.

/media/Backup folder doesn't exist. Change ownership of correct mount_point (folder).
Check the contents of /etc/fstab file and note down mount point of ext3 partition. Execute chown command on that folder.

Code:

sudo chown -R alan:alan <correct_mount_point>

In case you can't figure out correct mount point, post the output of df -h command and contents of /etc/fstab file here.

Code:

df -h
cat /etc/fstab

This is getting stranger, doesn't seem to be a mention of it:

alan@alan-laptop:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 38G 11G 27G 28% /
tmpfs 469M 0 469M 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 469M 320K 469M 1% /var/run
varlock 469M 0 469M 0% /var/lock
udev 469M 152K 469M 1% /dev
tmpfs 469M 152K 469M 1% /dev/shm
lrm 469M 2.2M 467M 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-16-generic/volatile
/dev/sda5 27G 20G 5.4G 79% /home

alan@alan-laptop:~$ cat /etc/fstabcat /etc/fstab
cat: /etc/fstabcat: No such file or directory
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=819c2094-1993-4bb4-9dca-22e1fa773cf1 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# Entry for /dev/sda5 :
UUID=9b8cd886-4f02-49f1-abf9-eafbcf0e894f /home ext3 relatime 0 2
# Entry for /dev/sda3 :
UUID=11634b0e-5fd6-48b9-ac3a-dfd59bd94992 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=664 0 0
alan@alan-laptop:~$

I can assure it exists!

Cheers,
Alan.

**alanrlow** · 10-30-2009

Originally Posted by devils casper

Regular user is alan only.

/media/Backup folder doesn't exist. Change ownership of correct mount_point (folder).
Check the contents of /etc/fstab file and note down mount point of ext3 partition. Execute chown command on that folder.

Code:

sudo chown -R alan:alan <correct_mount_point>

In case you can't figure out correct mount point, post the output of df -h command and contents of /etc/fstab file here.

Code:

df -h
cat /etc/fstab

Now if I mount Backup through PCMan File Manager and run those commands again I get:

alan@alan-laptop:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 38G 11G 27G 28% /
tmpfs 469M 0 469M 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 469M 320K 469M 1% /var/run
varlock 469M 0 469M 0% /var/lock
udev 469M 152K 469M 1% /dev
tmpfs 469M 164K 469M 1% /dev/shm
lrm 469M 2.2M 467M 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-16-generic/volatile
/dev/sda5 27G 20G 5.4G 79% /home
/dev/sda2 78G 2.9G 71G 4% /media/Backup
alan@alan-laptop:~$ cat /etc/fstabcat /etc/fstab
cat: /etc/fstabcat: No such file or directory
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=819c2094-1993-4bb4-9dca-22e1fa773cf1 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# Entry for /dev/sda5 :
UUID=9b8cd886-4f02-49f1-abf9-eafbcf0e894f /home ext3 relatime 0 2
# Entry for /dev/sda3 :
UUID=11634b0e-5fd6-48b9-ac3a-dfd59bd94992 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=664 0 0
alan@alan-laptop:~$

It shows up as:

/dev/sda2 78G 2.9G 71G 4% /media/Backup

Cheers,
Alan.

**devils casper** · 10-30-2009

There isn't any entry of /dev/sda2 in /etc/fstab file.
Open /etc/fstab file with root privileges

Code:

sudo mkdir /media/Backup
sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add this line :

Code:

/dev/sda2   /media/Backup  ext3  defaults  0  1

Press Ctrl+X, Y and hit Enter key to save file. Execute sudo mount -a command and post error message here, if any.
Execute chown command again :

Code:

sudo chown -R alan:alan /media/Backup

**alanrlow** · 10-30-2009

Originally Posted by devils casper

There isn't any entry of /dev/sda2 in /etc/fstab file.
Open /etc/fstab file with root privileges

Code:

sudo mkdir /media/Backup
sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add this line :

Code:

/dev/sda2   /media/Backup  ext3  defaults  0  1

Press Ctrl+X, Y and hit Enter key to save file. Execute sudo mount -a command and post error message here, if any.
Execute chown command again :

Code:

sudo chown -R alan:alan /media/Backup

Yeah, your da man!! After I did everything as you said I was still getting an error message, albeit a different error message. It said, Cannot mount volume. You are not privileged to mount the volume Backup. I logged out and back in, no better. So I rebooted and there was Backup on the desktop. You beauty, thanks very much.

Cheers,
Alan.

**alanrlow** · 10-30-2009

On a different topic if I can pick your brain again. What is your thoughts on adding "noatime 0 1" at the end on that line in fstab? From what I have read in my research for my problem it seems it might speed up disk access by reducing unnecessary writes to the disk.
Worthwhile do you think?

Cheers,
Alan.

**devils casper** · 10-30-2009

noatime option will definitely increase performance because OS will not update read timestamp whenever you read/access any file in that partition. It will update timestamp only when you edit/create any file.
If you don't want to keep record of read access of files then use noatime option. There isn't any harm in using noatime option for /media/Backup partition.

Last to digits are for dump and fsck. 0 and 1 are default values and shouldn't be changed.

Code:

/dev/sda2   /media/Backup  ext3   defaults,noatime 0 1

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