Ubuntu Trusty 14.04 unable to mount partition not listed in /etc/fstab after crash

Question

Following a crash while moving the mouse over a Firefox tab, my Ubuntu Trusty 14.04 did restart properly, however it only sees the disk(s)/partition(s) listed in the /etc/fstab.

I cannot mount any other partition.

I take here the example of one empty partition sitting in my /dev/sda drive.

$ sudo fsck -t ext4 /dev/sda10
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
e2fsck 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014)
Linux_Root_1: clean, 12/3670016 files, 276369/14648576 blocks
$

$ sudo mount /dev/sda10
mount: can't find /dev/sda10 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
$

The only thing close to what is happening is described in this webpage.

However, I don't see any error when running the file system check.

For further information here is the gdisk list of partitions within /dev/sda, then a cat of /etc/fstab and a cat of /etc/mtab.

From the system error message I image there should be something wrong with /etc/mtab ? I don't see any of the unmounted partitions in there ... Why ? Anybody can help ?

$ sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048         1953791   953.0 MiB   EF00  
   2         1953792         2215935   128.0 MiB   0C01  
   3         2215936       392579071   186.1 GiB   0700  
   4       392579072       783204351   186.3 GiB   AF00  
   5       783204352       784181247   477.0 MiB   0700  
   6       784181248       815431679   14.9 GiB    8200  
   7       815431680       971681791   74.5 GiB    0700 
   8       971681792      1206056959   111.8 GiB   0700  
   9      1206056960      1303713791   46.6 GiB    0700  
  10      1303713792      1420902399   55.9 GiB    0700  
  11      1420902400      1538091007   55.9 GiB    0700 
  12      1538091008      1953523711   198.1 GiB   0700  
$ 

$ cat /etc/fstab
UUID=20ec15ac-42a4-414e-af22-8dd895678f76 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
UUID=66589507-f572-455e-9b6d-1e77a0fa45c5 /boot           ext2    defaults        0       2
UUID=CF3B-1041  /boot/efi       vfat    defaults        0       1
UUID=5f5a6094-99af-47bf-aa56-1a871fdd684d /home           ext4    defaults        0       2
UUID=5822928d-4e71-4950-99d2-015b28f6a857 none            swap    sw              0       0
UUID=4f9ce228-559f-4004-89cb-40430454084d none            swap    sw              0       0
UUID=0bab0354-c80b-41f1-97e2-ac58a8e7dc74 /media/VMware-VMs ext4    defaults    0   2
UUID=78347182-6752-4acf-a790-f02fd806795d /media/Downloads  ext3    defaults    0   2`

$ cat /etc/mtab
/dev/sda7 / ext4 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs rw 0 0
none /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw 0 0
none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw 0 0
none /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw 0 0
none /sys/firmware/efi/efivars efivarfs rw 0 0
udev /dev devtmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620 0 0
tmpfs /run tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755 0 0
none /run/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880 0 0
none /run/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /run/user tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=104857600,mode=0755 0 0
none /sys/fs/pstore pstore rw 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset cgroup rw,relatime,cpuset 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu cgroup rw,relatime,cpu 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuacct cgroup rw,relatime,cpuacct 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/memory cgroup rw,relatime,memory 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/devices cgroup rw,relatime,devices 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer cgroup rw,relatime,freezer 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls cgroup rw,relatime,net_cls 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio cgroup rw,relatime,blkio 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event cgroup rw,relatime,perf_event 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/net_prio cgroup rw,relatime,net_prio 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/hugetlb cgroup rw,relatime,hugetlb 0 0
/dev/sda5 /boot ext2 rw 0 0
/dev/sda8 /home ext4 rw 0 0
/dev/sda9 /media/VMware-VMs ext4 rw 0 0
/dev/sda1 /boot/efi vfat rw 0 0
/dev/sda12 /media/Downloads ext3 rw 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
systemd /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd cgroup rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,none,name=systemd 0 0
vmware-vmblock /run/vmblock-fuse fuse.vmware-vmblock rw,nosuid,nodev,default_permissions,allow_other 0 0
gvfsd-fuse /run/user/501/gvfs fuse.gvfsd-fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,user=jean 0 0
$

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 23 '15 at 06:12

The complaint you are getting is because the mount is unable to guess which directory to mount the partition to. In this syntax, the mount command will need two arguments: the partition to mount, and the directory onto where to mount it. Thus, it might look like:

mount /dev/sda10 /mnt

You will need a separate, empty directory for each partition that you want to mount.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

My question still did not say all the story. After a crash, when I opened Nemo / Nautilus I didn't see any of the 'free standing' drives / partitions not already mounted by /etc/fstab at startup.

OK, in my first attempt to mount one partition on a cmd. line I failed to provide a mount point, which is usually /mnt on any UNIX like systems. But this did not explain why I wasn't able to see any unmounted partitions / drives in Nemo / Nautilus.

I tried later to connect an USB stick, and as expected it didn't auto mount as well.

From web searches, I had a hint that the GNOME Virtual File System or gvfs was not working at all. Typing this cmd. would in fact only list the already mounted drives:

$ gvfs-mount --list
Volume(0): floppy0
  Type: GUnixVolume
Mount(0): Downloads -> file:///media/Downloads
  Type: GUnixMount
Mount(1): VMware-VMs -> file:///media/VMware-VMs
  Type: GUnixMount
$

It should have seen the plugged-in USB stick but didn't.

I then checked that the GNOME automount was properly configured as decribed in this Ubuntu Help.

Then I did find my gvfs folder reading this webpage.

$ mount | grep gvfs
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/501/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=jean)
$ ls -l /run/user/501/gvfs
total 0
$

I understood as well that I needed to kill and restart the daemon process and I got informations reading this Launchpad bug report.

To list mount points used by gvfs

$ ls -als /run/user/501/gvfs
total 0
0 dr-x------  2 jean jean   0 Dec 22 17:42 .
0 drwx------ 10 jean jean 260 Dec 22 17:42 ..
$

There was none.

Then I checked whether the gvfsd daemon process was active.

$ ps axu | grep gvfs
jean      5993  0.0  0.0 680372  6356 ?        Sl   17:42   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd
jean      5998  0.0  0.0 345696  7936 ?        Sl   17:42   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-fuse /run/user/501/gvfs -f -o big_writes
jean      6103  0.0  0.0 211932  5860 ?        Sl   17:42   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-udisks2-volume-monitor
jean      6292  0.0  0.0 359596  8724 ?        Sl   17:42   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-trash --spawner :1.4 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/0
jean      8015  0.0  0.0 286244  8236 ?        Sl   17:42   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-afc-volume-monitor
jean      8031  0.0  0.0 200328  5420 ?        Sl   17:42   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-mtp-volume-monitor
jean      8036  0.0  0.0 214748  8352 ?        Sl   17:42   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor
jean      8051  0.0  0.0 270404  5664 ?        Sl   17:42   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-burn --spawner :1.4 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/1
jean     13187  0.0  0.0  15972  2308 pts/3    S+   23:14   0:00 grep --color=auto gvfs
jean     14115  0.0  0.0 127572  8000 ?        Sl   17:44   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-metadata
jean     17443  0.0  0.1 1594092 29880 ?       Sl   17:45   0:01 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-http --spawner :1.4 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/2

And it was. Appearing at the first line. Killing it with the following cmd.

$ sudo killall -9 gvfsd

Then relaunching the daemon (process)

$ sudo /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-fuse /run/user/501/gvfs

Well, that's it. It didn't show up straight as I needed to completely shutdown and restart the system. But right after the system restart, gvfs worked fine and I had access to all partitions / drives within Nemo / Nautilus.

Previously, restarting the system would not solve anything.

Ubuntu Trusty 14.04 unable to mount partition not listed in /etc/fstab after crash

2 Answers2

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