Devlabel and Fstab with usb pendrive

[Darragh Bailey]

Been having this problem for a while now. 

Used devlabel to deal with a previous problem that depending on whether my 
printer was switched on or not would affect which device my usb pendrive was 
picked up as. devlabel allowed me to use a symlink to the device which it would 
create and delete when the device was added removed, which meant that I could 
use a consistent device name in my /etc/fstab file. This allowed me to set it 
up so that any user could mount/unmount my pendrive. 


my /etc/fstab file has the following entry for this device. 
/dev/usb-pendrive       /mnt/usb-pendrive       vfat   
noauto,owner,kudzu,users,noatime,gid=100,umask=002 0 0 


The problem is that when updfstab is run I get the following message 
cannot stat /dev/usb-pendrive: No such file or directory 

which is not supprising really, since unless the pendrive is actually connected 
to the machine the device entry isn't going to exist since devlabel will delete 
it. 


The possible solutions I can see are: 
Get updfstab to ignore the entries in /etc/fstab that depend on entries that 
may not exist 
Get devlabel to not delete the symlink when the device is removed and instead 
point it to a non used dev that will not be used by a device (/dev/null comes 
to mind, but I'm sure there are others). 


I can't seem to work out how to do either of the above or locate any entries on 
the internet that cover the same problem. 

Or is all just a case that I've added the usb pendrive incorrectly and I should 
be adding it so that devlabel and updfstab will create the desired /etc/fstab 
entry for me when the pendrive is plugged into the PC? 


-- 
Darragh

"Nothing's foolproof to a sufficently talented fool"