Talk:USB drives

Michael, something looks wrong to me, but I'm not sure if it's an error on your part, or a misunderstanding on my part of what you're doing.

As I understand it, the /mnt directory is where you put SUBdirectories, onto which you mount file systems. So if you mount a device's file system onto /mnt directly, I would think it would mess up anything else you might want to mount in /mnt.

So, for instance, /mnt/cdrom would break, and /mnt/zipdisk or whatever else.

So I'd think that doing

mkdir /mnt/usbdrive

and then using that instead of /mnt would be a better approach?

-Pete

Good question, Pete. This is largely a matter of preference. If you do subdirectories in /mnt, then those would break. But I think it is better practice if you regularly use mountable devices, to create special mount points for them (such as /floppy and /cdrom) and leave /mnt alone for things you only sporadically use. Some people prefer the approach you take. The current freekbox3 image does not have any subfolders in /mnt but mounts things like the floppy in /media and when we set up automounting for usb drives, that is probably where it will go. The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard for /mnt (below) leaves the configuration of /mnt pretty much up to the individual:

This directory is provided so that the system administrator may temporarily mount a filesystem as needed. The content of this directory is a local issue and should not affect the manner in which any program is run.

-- MW 08:44, 19 Feb 2006 (PST)