Ubuntu automount (/etc/fstab) weird behavior

Question

I have SSD + HDD setup and planned to have OS on SSD (/dev/sdb) and use HDD (/dev/sda) as storage. I want HDD to be mounted during system start to the subfolder of home (full path /home/artemm/large). I put into fstab:

UUID=627cd586-cfb1-49eb-83b4-ee52e95b36bf /home/artemm/large           ext4    defaults,errors=remount-ro        0       2

Or

/dev/sda3 /home/artemm/large           ext4    defaults        0       2

Or generate with disks utility:

/dev/disk/by-uuid/627cd586-cfb1-49eb-83b4-ee52e95b36bf /home/artemm/large auto nosuid,nodev,nofail 0 0

Or even add to /etc/bash.bashrc

mount /dev/sda3 /home/artemm/large/

All produces the same result: After boot I got my HDD mounted but I don't see any folders or files. In Nautilus in devices section hdd looks mounted but empty.

Here is screenshot of manual mount:

and here is result of automount (no files/folders but it seems it determines free space):

Here are some additional facts:

• I can't unmount that disk ( http://minus.com/lNX7PEwb8IFEx ).
• If I remove automount and run fsck it runs normally (no errors).
• If I remove automount and mount manually it mounts as expected (to /home/artemm/large/).
• If I remove automount then add entry to fstab then in terminal "sudo mount -a" it mounts as expected (to /home/artemm/large/).
• Running just installed Ubuntu 14.04

Any idea what could provoke such behavior and/or how to handle my use case (mounting hdd on startup)?

It seems like even as folder is shown as device it points just to folder rather than mount

Update: I've created file in that mount point after automount (so folder was empty). It persist with automount. http://minus.com/lbj4nL0jOnK2Z9 . But "sudo mount /dev/sda3 /home/artemm/large/" changes content to "regular"/expected one (several folders I expect to see there).

Update 2: In terminal after automount and boot (folder empty):

$ mount -l | grep large
/dev/sda3 on /home/artemm/large type ext4 (rw)

Then doing:

$ mount /dev/sda3
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda3 is already mounted on /home/artemm/large
mount failed
$ sudo mount /dev/sda3 
$

After mount with sudo everything works as expected (I got my folders back).

Answer 1

I think your problem is a wrong rigths set up. Do your /home/user/large folder have the good rights, as long as owner and group ?

After that, just use Disks again, make sure the "mount at startup" is checked, as long as "show in user interface", but not "Require additional authorization to mount". Also make sure you've selected the filesystem type as ext4 instead of auto.

Here's my configuration for my own fs:

UUID=XXX   /mnt/test   ext4    nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show   0       0

Answer 2

I have encrypted home folder and it seems that caused a problem. OS might try to mount drive before home folder is accessible. I ended up with creating mount point at /mnt/large and then creating symlink from /home/artemm/large there.