Questions on using disks, making filesystems, and mounting

khedger

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Hi all,

Though I think I might understand some of this, I'm not sure how much I REALLY understand so your help is greatly appreciated.
I have an Ubuntu box with three SDDs installed, a 500 gb and two 1 tb drives. After installation the root filesystem (and everything else) is on the 500 gb drive. There are no filesystems on the other two drives, however the devices are known to the system.

I want to mount those other two disks. Please confirm for me that what I need to do is:
  • make filesystems for the mountpoints (makefs command)
  • mount the filesystems on the devices (mount command) and update mounttab or fstab (which is it?)
If I can manage to get that done I have another question.
How can I make a relationship between the root filesystem and these new mountpoints? For instance, is there a way I can get it so that when I do 'ls -la /' I see not only the contents of the root filesystem, but also these new filesystems' contents. Or are they forever separate entities? My gut is telling me that there are probably a lot of games that can be played with the WAY these things are mounted.....

Anyway, again, I appreciate any pointeres.....

keith
 


My goodness, a Gamer only a few months younger than me - there's hope for me yet :)

G'day Keith.

It's good that the other two SSDs are larger than your operating system drive, that gives you more flexibility for storage.

Certainly, you can use makefs and mount to effect what you seek if you wish the practice with Terminal, but a simpler solution would be to use a combination of GPartEd and GNOME disks. GParted to format the 2 drives to EXT4, and GNOME Disks will allow you to instruct your Linux to mount the drives at each startup (through fstab), and makes the necessary adjustments automatically.

Are you using 'buntu's 20.04 LTS desktop (GNOME) or other? It's always best to tell us your environment.

Regrets that I have to leave now for my evening DownUnder, and I have a 300 km road trip to make tomorrow morning before I get back to this.

Someone else may have other ideas.

Cheers

Wizard
 
G'day Keith, just a reminder

Are you using 'buntu's 20.04 LTS desktop (GNOME) or other?

If so, then in your Software Centre or whatever it's called, is Timeshift, that is worth installing, I'll explain more in a little.

Following are my suggestions, but yours are the decisions to make.

I am supposing that the Ubuntu on the 500 GB SSD is regarded as /dev/sda1.

So one of the 1 TB drives will become /dev/sdb and the other /dev/sdc.

  1. If you don't already have it, install GParted if you don't have it, then
    Code:
    sudo apt install gparted
  2. I would dedicate one of the 1 TBers for Timeshift, and the other for your Games. At the top right in GParted (once launched), there is a drop down "elevator button" which will allow you to switch to /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc.
  3. Go into each of them one at a time and you can use the menu option Device and then Create Partition Table. Choose GPT over the default MS-DOS. Then right-click in the main pane or use the menu to select New (under Partition) and create a partition made in EXT4 format. For now you can use the whole space available for each of what will result in /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdc1.
Now to mount them and in particular to have them mounted at startup.

After exiting, launch GNOME Disks (just type disks in your application launcher).

In my screenshot below, you can see I have one of my Distro partitions (Ubuntu 20.04 'Focal Fossa') MATE highlighted - you will just have the one in each case - /dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdc1, and I am about to choose to edit mount options, initiated by clicking the small cog

6i6rsnl.png


In Mount Options, I then choose as the screenshot lets me know, and that is to toggle the switch off, so that the disks will be mounted at startup, then OK the changes.

G35ByVm.png


Once the changes are OK'ed you can exit Disks, and /etc/fstab will have been modified to mount the two additional SSDs every time you reboot.


Back with more tomorrow.

Wiz
 
Wiz,

I appreciate your help, but alas....I'm not really a gamer I expect to do some server/database stuff with this box and hence the ginormous disk sizes......

Thanks,

keith
 
My Asperger's kicking in, LOL

My gut is telling me that there are probably a lot of games that can be played with the WAY these things are mounted.....

The penny drops now :)

Doesn't matter - for "dedicated games drive" just read "dedicated server/database stuff" drive.

If you have the time and patience to wade through some of the chitchat my well-meaning friends put in, you could read my Thread on Timeshift here.

https://www.linux.org/threads/timeshift-similar-solutions-safeguard-recover-your-linux.15241/

... and ask any questions on Timeshift there.

There are also some references below

REFERENCE URLs

Tony George pages

https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift

https://github.com/teejee2008/Timeshift/releases

OTHER GUIDES

https://itsfoss.com/backup-restore-linux-timeshift/

https://www.fosslinux.com/34377/how-to-backup-and-restore-ubuntu-with-timeshift.htm

https://www.fossmint.com/backup-restore-linux-with-timeshift/

and this from Linux Lite Help Manual, and MX-Linux

https://www.linuxliteos.com/manual/tutorials.html#timeshift

https://mxlinux.org/wiki/applications/timeshift/

Back later.

Wiz
 

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