What does the star indicator mean in gnome-disk-utility GUI

Question

Running Xubuntu there are two indicators used on the RH pane of the GUI in gnome-disk-utility. There's a litle arrow/triangle which says the partition is mounted, but what does the star symbol mean?

More info which might help: I have a portable system on a USB stick and occasionally the kernel gets updated and the grub menu is updated. If I am doing this on the machine in question, os-probe finds the system on sda3 but not that on sda2. I then manually remove the unwanted grub menu item using grub-customizer. If I reinstall grub on sda2 or sda3, os-probe finds the other system OK.

My concern is that I want to delete the sda3 partition to use it for something else. If I do this, will it break my system?

In response to C.S.Cameron The GParted reference looks like this:

I think I might be about to answer my own question but now I need to know how to fix it. /etc/fstab looks like this: Does this mean that at boot-time something is pointing to sda3? And if so, should I change the entry

UUID=73c471ad-f49f-42a2-a576-089bf014d1a1

to

UUID=88ab6066-7975-4b36-b279-51819da25293

which would then point to sda2? Or would this just make things worse?

And going back to my original question, does the star really mean that the partitions with a star are those listed in fstab?

Answer 1

Gnome-Disks Stars and Triangles.

The star shows that the partition is in use by the Linux OS, (ie /, /home or swap). The triangles indicate that the partition is mounted, Clicking the triangle lower left will mount the partition and then change to a square another click on the square will unmount it.

Answer 2

The star indicates whether the partition is "configured" to be mounted by some means...

for instance:

• /etc/fstab...
• or shutting off user defaults in gnome-disks "mount options" (which is essentially /etc/fstab, so "configured" may just mean /etc/fstab)...
• possibly even "autofs" (I haven't verified that one)...

...if you want to examine the theory just comment out an entry in your /etc/fstab and the star goes away immediately... Leave it out and configure the "Edit mount options" to shut off "User session defaults" in gnome-disks, the star should come back... (as a corresponding entry is added to /etc/fstab.... disable that, and it goes away....

It is kind of a not-very intuitive concept because of the wording... User session defaults doesn't seem to apply to the "user" as we would think it. By turning "User session defaults" OFF, you are actually applying what gnome-disks entry(yours) INTO /etc/fstab.... So essentially, "User Session Defaults" really seems to be what the 'system' (fstab) has. Seems backwards, not to mention the F#@#%#%@% on/off switch button (used all over ubuntu) is one of the most confusing I have EVER seen.

This means you have added the CDROM to your /etc/fstab

....the star is not affected by the auto/noauto option... so i don't believe it has to do with auto-mounting, just seems to be whether or not it is a configured entry.

Answer 3

The star shows that, particular partition is automatically mounted whenever you boot up/switch on your system. While the triangle shows to the partition/drive is mounted.

Answer 4

OK, I think I've now got to the bottom of this.

The little star DOES mean that the partition is specified in fstab. It has nothing to do with whether or not it is mounted; that's the little arrow. Removing the partition from "Edit mount options" in gnome-disks simply deletes the fstab entry. The system continues to boot fine as I assume this is all specified in the config when installing/updating grub.

Deleting an entry and adding another entry in fstab removes the little star from the deleted entry and adds a star to the new entry. Again this doesn't affect booting and can be done with any old data partition - it doesn't need to have a system and can have any file organisation as far as I can tell. I've not tried it with an encrypted partition.

I wish they'd put this sort of stuff in the --help or man-pages !!

I've solved my 'problem', if problem I had, by correcting the UUID in fstab on sda2 with a little star against sda2 and sda5 (swap). fstab on sda3 is OK, too, as it correctly puts the star in sda3 and sda5 (swap).

Tks for your help in prompting my thinking, Wu-Tang.

Happy days !!

jg1

Answer 5

The star means that the partition mount options are customized. In other words, when you select "Edit Mount options", if you let the "User session defaults" then the star will not appear.