LinLog

Listen up Linux newbies! I'm going to let you in on a little secret: the "auto" and "noauto" options in /etc/fstab don't mean what you think they do.

Why do I bring this up? Because if you frequent forums like LinuxQuestions.org, you've probably seen threads like this one, asking about getting USB thumb drives to auto-mount or not auto-mount. Invariably, somebody suggests adding an "auto" or "noauto" to /etc/fstab.

To an inexperienced user, this might seem like a natural suggestion. "Auto" means auto-mount, so that should do the trick, right? And if you specify "noauto" then the device should not auto-mount. It makes sense and it's easy to do. Perfect!

Unfortunately, the system doesn't work that way. If you read the man page for the mount command, you'll see that the auto and noauto options actually control whether or not the filesystem is mounted when you run the "mount -a" command. This command mounts all filesystems not specified as "noauto" and is typically run on boot to mount your local hard drives and network filesystems.

So, in other words, the "auto" option in /etc/fstab really just means "mount this device on boot." For USB thumb drives, this is pretty useless, as you don't normally have them plugged in when you first boot up. What you want is for the drive to be automatically mounted when you plug it into the system. However, /etc/fstab has absolutely nothing to do with this.

On modern Linux systems, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, or anything released since 2005 (except for Slackware), automounting of removable drives is accomplished through the magical combination of D-BUS, HAL, and a volume manager (which is often integrated into the desktop environment).

The good thing about this setup is that it's highly flexible. D-BUS is a generic message bus and HAL is a generic hardware abstraction layer, so they can handle most any kind of hardware hotplugging, not just USB drives or CDs. It can also work for printers, digital cameras, MP3 players, or what have you. The down side is that it's a fairly complex software stack with lots of dependencies, so if it's not working out of the box, you're pretty much screwed. Sure, you might be able to get them working eventually, but it will probably take some significant knowledge of the system.

So if you want auto-mounting and it's not working, the news is bad. But if you're just looking to turn off the auto-mounting or popping up a file manager or something, the news is good. In fact, if you're using GNOME or KDE, the news is great, because they both have graphical configuration for the volume manager. In KDE, for example, you can set custom actions by the type of media, so you can choose to auto-mount USB drives, but not DVDs, or choose to automatically play audio CDs and video DVDs.

So the lesson for today is: don't worry about the auto and noauto options in /etc/fstab. They don't do anything interesting. And if you're trying to get your USB or other removable media to mount when you insert them, they don't do anything at all.

And, lastly, if you see somebody spreading this myth of "auto" and "noauto" around, call them on it. Correct them and point them to this page. And, if you're a real jack-ass, laugh and mock them for their lack of skillz.