[gentoo-user] Mounting a big drive for stuff - /mnt or /media

[gentoo-user] Mounting a big drive for stuff - /mnt or /media

[Stroller]

Hi there,

I'm in the process of commissioning a box which has a large hard drive  
on which videos, mp3s & stuff will be stored.

On all my other machines, such drives are mounted at /mnt/space (and a  
second drive at /mnt/morespace)

I have a notion to move to a hierarchy under /media/ - something like / 
media/space or /media/videos or  /media/disk1,  /media/disk2, /media/ 
disk3, ...

I can't remember WHY I came iup with this idea, however.

Googling, I can find more than one message to this list in which I  
assert this intention and state refer to a discussion on this list  
which led to it. However I can't find that previous discussion itself.
http://www.linux-archive.org/gentoo-user/168375-mediatomb-media-server-users-permissions-media-videox.html
http://www.nabble.com/Autofs-or-ivman--td14647701.html

The only thing that springs to mind is that /mnt was originally used  
by system administrators to temporarily mount removable media. I think  
the FHS comes into it. But right now this isn't terribly convincing,  
particularly as I currently expect to be using one BIG volume, so  
there should be no need for more than drive mounted in this way.

Can anyone persuade me or provide other reasons for using /media?

Thanks in advance,

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting a big drive for stuff - /mnt or /media

[pk]

Stroller wrote:

> The only thing that springs to mind is that /mnt was originally used by
> system administrators to temporarily mount removable media. I think the
> FHS comes into it. But right now this isn't terribly convincing,
> particularly as I currently expect to be using one BIG volume, so there
> should be no need for more than drive mounted in this way.

Mostly it's a matter of taste, as I see it. Acc. to FHS /mnt is for
temporarily mounted filesystems while /media is for removable media. But
since it's your system you can call it whatever you like. Of course if
you are using some kind of automounter you may need to follow what ever
restrictions it has...

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting a big drive for stuff - /mnt or /media

[Dale]

Stroller wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I'm in the process of commissioning a box which has a large hard drive
> on which videos, mp3s & stuff will be stored.
>
> On all my other machines, such drives are mounted at /mnt/space (and a
> second drive at /mnt/morespace)
>
> I have a notion to move to a hierarchy under /media/ - something like
> /media/space or /media/videos or  /media/disk1,  /media/disk2,
> /media/disk3, ...
>
> I can't remember WHY I came iup with this idea, however.
>
> Googling, I can find more than one message to this list in which I
> assert this intention and state refer to a discussion on this list
> which led to it. However I can't find that previous discussion itself.
> http://www.linux-archive.org/gentoo-user/168375-mediatomb-media-server-users-permissions-media-videox.html
>
> http://www.nabble.com/Autofs-or-ivman--td14647701.html
>
> The only thing that springs to mind is that /mnt was originally used
> by system administrators to temporarily mount removable media. I think
> the FHS comes into it. But right now this isn't terribly convincing,
> particularly as I currently expect to be using one BIG volume, so
> there should be no need for more than drive mounted in this way.
>
> Can anyone persuade me or provide other reasons for using /media?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Stroller.
>
>
>

You can create a mount point and mount the drive where ever you want.  I
created the mount point /data on my system and mounted a drive to it.  I
store my wallpapers, some rarely used documents, owners manuals and
things like that there.  Point is, Linux doesn't care where you put it,
just put it where you want it and can find it.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting a big drive for stuff - /mnt or /media

[Roy Wright]

On Aug 6, 2009, at 4:49 AM, Dale wrote:

> Stroller wrote:
>> Can anyone persuade me or provide other reasons for using /media?
>>

I'm running 3 systems that have media drives for my home theater.   
What I did was to mount the local volume on /var/media.  Then used  
autofs to mount the nfs shared volumes under /media/auto.  Finally I  
symbolically linked each volume to /media.

Abridged example:

royw-gentoo:
/var/media  => mounted lvm volume
/media/auto/xbmc => nfs://xbmc.local/media
/media/royw-gento => /var/media
/media/xbmc => /media/auto/xbmc

xbmc:
/var/media  => mounted lvm volume
/media/auto/royw-gentoo => nfs://royw-gentoo.local/media
/media/xbmc => /var/media
/media/royw-gentoo => /media/auto/royw-gentoo

Now on either machine I can reference /media/xbmc or /media/royw-gentoo

Also each media volume uses the LinuxMCE directory scheme:
public
+ data
++ audio
++ documents
++ pictures
++ videos
local
user

Have fun,
Roy

[gentoo-user] Re: Mounting a big drive for stuff - /mnt or /media

[walt]

On 08/05/2009 05:12 PM, Stroller wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I'm in the process of commissioning a box which has a large hard drive
> on which videos, mp3s & stuff will be stored.
>
> On all my other machines, such drives are mounted at /mnt/space (and a
> second drive at /mnt/morespace)
>
> I have a notion to move to a hierarchy under /media/ - something like
> /media/space or /media/videos or /media/disk1, /media/disk2,
> /media/disk3, ...
>
> I can't remember WHY I came iup with this idea, however...

Gnome, for example, automatically mounts removable media on /media.
I don't know if that default can even be changed, and I never bothered
to find out.

You are right that /mnt is a very old unix standard directory and new
fangled applications like auto-mounting desktops (i.e. gnome) should
not be messing with it because some older app may come along and mount
right on top of your already mounted filesystem.  Very confusing!

Using the good old SWAG method, I'd say that the much newer OpenDesktop
group probably designated /media as the newfangled replacement for /mnt.
Anyone know for sure?

If you plan to mount your data partition (or whatever) so that it will
always be in exactly the same place, then you should create a new mount
point of your own and mount your partition there using /etc/fstab.

Where you put the new mount point depends on whether the filesystem is
to be available to all users of the machine, or just you.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Mounting a big drive for stuff - /mnt or /media

[Stroller]

On 7 Aug 2009, at 00:01, walt wrote:
> ...
> Gnome, for example, automatically mounts removable media on /media.
> I don't know if that default can even be changed, and I never bothered
> to find out.
>
> ...
> If you plan to mount your data partition (or whatever) so that it will
> always be in exactly the same place, then you should create a new  
> mount
> point of your own and mount your partition there using /etc/fstab.
>
> Where you put the new mount point depends on whether the filesystem is
> to be available to all users of the machine, or just you.

I perhaps should have mentioned that it's a headless server & that  
this will just basically be a drive which is used for file-serving.

So no automount stuff goes near it.

I'm inclined to look at automounting USB disks, CFcard readers &  
stuff, because sometimes it is handy to plug those into the machine  
which serves as central file repository.

But right now I'm seeing no reason not to use my familiar /mnt/space  
convention.

Stroller.