Disk mounting best practice?

Audigex · 26 Jun 2013 at 21:55

Hi

I've got a 250GB HDD in my NAS/server.

I've just added a 2TB disk, too, and formatted it as ext4. I'm about to mount it as a folder - but I've no idea on where/how I should do it. The machine should eventually contain 4 large disks on top of the 250GB system disk.

I've used Linux a small-moderate amount, but I've never played with disk stuff before - my other linux experience is on a server at work (6 drives in hardware RAID6 and mount the single drive) and virtual machines (a single virtual disk)

Should I mount the drive under /randomname /home/me/name /mnt/name or some other variation? Does it matter? Also, do I mount the disk (SATA Device A Partition 1) or the "partition with ID"? (I'm using Webmin)

The drive will basically just be a backup for the 2TB in my windows machine, presented as an OwnCloud and Samba shares, probably with FTP access (so everyone can play). I'll then move the 2TB it's backing up into the NAS too, and keep them as simple manual backups (maybe with a cron job to sync them). I'm guessing that as long as I create the drive as a mount somewhere, it doesn't really matter where it is under the file structure?

Later on, when I've got a couple more disks to be able to swap things around I'll create a 2x2TB RAID1's (4x 2TB disks) and mount everything as a single LVM... but for now, I just need access to the two drives.

aln · 26 Jun 2013 at 22:31

It depends what you're using it for. Some people mount their /usr and /home directory remotly, which in theory should allow you to hotdesk. Technically / on your system is just a mount defined from /etc/fstab.

As defined within the FHS you should mount this within /mnt/$blah, but in reality it doesn't really matter. Personally I have a /storage on my desktop with some symlinks within home, and /data on my nas which I believe is where ZFS automagically mounted itself. Meh.

Audigex · 27 Jun 2013 at 00:50

Great, thanks - I'll just chuck them somewhere handy then.

inSilica · 27 Jun 2013 at 17:26

I usually have fstab mount to /mnt/meaninfulMountName

Export the path via nfs directly from the /mnt

Then I symlink in my local user area.

Works well for me

Audigex · 27 Jun 2013 at 17:58

I'm not sure what some (most) of those words meant

could I get that again in layman's terms?

I think you mean that you mount the drive as /mnt/driveName and then make a symlink (which is basically a linux shortcut) so that /home/you/name is the same as /mnt/drivename? If so, what is "exporting the path via nfs directly from the /mnt"?

inSilica · 27 Jun 2013 at 20:38

Exporting to NFS puts the drive on the network, e.g. You can use a raspberry pi to mount the NFS export and play movies.

You can also mount the drive from a laptop to work on something.

I like NFS because you can mount without a username and password providing the correct rule/export is defined.

Everything else you said is correct and you have understood what I said.

aln · 27 Jun 2013 at 20:46

inSilica said:
Exporting to NFS puts the drive on the network, e.g. You can use a raspberry pi to mount the NFS export and play movies.

You can also mount the drive from a laptop to work on something.

I like NFS because you can mount without a username and password providing the correct rule/export is defined.

Everything else you said is correct and you have understood what I said.

NFSv3 works differently from v4, I gather you're refering to v4 because v3 is a sob with permissions from my experience and you make it available to clients in a different way.

Audigex · 28 Jun 2013 at 10:00

Excellent, thanks - I'll experiment with NFS sometime, although for now I'm happy just using/mounting samba shares: they work and it means I can admin all my shares from one location.