Linux @lemmy.ml Tippon @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2mo ago

What's the best way to mount hard drives so that all users can access them at all times? Mint 22

Update: I managed to get it working with the answers from @Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me and this link:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-permanently-mount-a-drive-in-linux-and-why-you-should/

I've just installed Mint 22 on my laptop, and I've got two storage drives alongside my main drive. I want these drives to be available to all users on boot, and to be readable and writable. At the moment they're treated as removable drives, and are mounted under the individual user. As a result, any permissions that I'm setting as the owner are not sticking when they're mounted by another user.

The first drive is synced with my main PC through Syncthing, and is synced to Onedrive from there. The second drive is my music, podcasts, and audiobooks, which are all synced through Syncthing only. I'm the only person using the laptop and accessing any of these files, so I'm not bothered about the wrong user accidentally opening them.

I've read some posts about editing fstab to mount them at startup, but they don't cover whether the drives will be available to other users or not. Can I just add them to fstab and mount them somewhere that's available to all users, then sort out the permissions? If so, where's the best place to put them?

Thanks in advance :)

8 comments

I've read some posts about editing fstab to mount them at startup, but they don't cover whether the drives will be available to other users or not. Can I just add them to fstab and mount them somewhere that's available to all users, then sort out the permissions? If so, where's the best place to put them?

Yes pretty much. It just explicitly tells the system where to mount it, and for some filesystems you can even force the UID/GID and modes.

Usually /mnt/whatever for static mounts and /media/whatever for removable mounts (those appear as drives in file managers, whereas /mnt doesn't). You can set the users option in fstab and it'll let users mount and unmount it without sudo as well, or auto to always mount it on boot.

From there usually you can make a shared group, chown the mount to root:thatgroup, then chmod g+s to make sure the group is inherited. And you should mostly be good to go.
- That's brilliant, thank you :)
  
  Usually /mnt/whatever for static mounts and /media/whatever for removable mounts (those appear as drives in file managers, whereas /mnt doesn't).
  
  Just to check, if I mount the drives under /media, will that still treat them as removable, or will they appear as permanent drives?
  
  They'll appear removable but if you don't put users in the option it shouldn't be unmountable.
use the user field parameter so that any volume can be mounted on demand.
- Thanks for replying :)
  
  I managed to get it working with the answers from @Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me and this link:
  
  https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-permanently-mount-a-drive-in-linux-and-why-you-should/
  
  I must have been testing it when you answered :)
What filesystem are you using?
- Ext4 everywhere.

8 comments