running shell scripts from external USB disk

[David G. Miller]

Jacob (=Jouk) Jansen wrote:

>> > How to change this? This USB disk is mounted automatically when pluged
>> > in. I cannot edit fstab since than the machine fails to boot when the
>> > disk is not present.
>
What directories are on the external drive that cause your system not to 
boot if it isn't present?  Or is it just that fstab has an entry for the 
drive?  If this is the case, a simple solution might be to just add 
"noauto" to the mount options in fstab.  This just causes the system to 
not attempt to automatically mount the device at boot.  Attaching the 
drive after boot should still result in it being automounted.  You might 
also want to look at the "user" and "users" options to mount since these 
allow a user to mount the device (user) and any user to unmount the 
device (users).

Cheers,
Dave

-- 
Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
-- Ambrose Bierce