Mount USB hard drive at boot time

[Old-Polack]

gnerdman:

As mount -a has the desired effect, as root, enter that on it's own line at the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local, press Enter to start a new line, then save the file.

Reboot, and all auto mount partitions will be.

That worked. I'm moderately annoyed that fstab doesn't, but a couple of days from now I'll forget all about it until I need it again.    Thanks for hanging in there, old-polack, I really appreciate your efforts!

Fstab is just a table, not an active script. Mount is supposed to source /etc/fstab and mount all the partitions listed there as being auto mounted. The command for that is mount -a. Having checked that the entry in /etc/fstab is correct, (contains no typos) and that mount -a actually does work, I would guess there's a problem with a module for the USB drive controller loading late, after the initial mount -a command, so even though the partition is properly listed, the kernel can't yet see the actual drive, at that time. As /etc/rc.d/rc.local is the last file sourced during the boot process, having an extra mount -a command there insures that it is executed after all modules are loaded.

There is nothing wrong with your /etc/fstab entry, and nothing wrong with the mount -a command, therefore it must be a timing issue alone, and this action corrects for that.