Unable to mount via /etc/fstab

Question

all:

Bringing up a new server, I have the following situation. I can mount the device at /dev/sda1 manually via this command: mount /dev/sda1 /owncloud

But when I use the recommended approach (UUID) in /etc/fstab, I receive an error that the device does not exist. This is contrary to what blkid tells me, so I'm confused. (One post elsewhere suggested telling the kernel to re-read the partition table so that's what the first command that follows is all about.)

    /etc> sudo blockdev --rereadpt /dev/sda

    /etc> blkid
    /dev/mmcblk0p1: LABEL_FATBOOT="boot" LABEL="boot" UUID="6341-C9E5" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="ea7d04d6-01"
    /dev/mmcblk0p2: LABEL="rootfs" UUID="80571af6-21c9-48a0-9df5-cffb60cf79af" TYPE="ext4" 
               PARTUUID="ea7d04d6-02"
    /dev/sda1: LABEL="owncloud" UUID="172715c3-abba-4a4b-b81e-47c9bbe28faf" TYPE="ext4" 
               PARTUUID="27760ec0-01"
    /dev/mmcblk0: PTUUID="ea7d04d6" PTTYPE="dos"

    /etc> mount /owncloud
    mount: /owncloud: special device 172715c3-abba-4a4b-b81e-47c9bbe28faf does not exist.

    /etc> cat /etc/fstab
    proc            /proc           proc    defaults          0       0
    PARTUUID=ea7d04d6-01  /boot           vfat    defaults          0       2
    PARTUUID=ea7d04d6-02  /               ext4    defaults,noatime  0       1
    # a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
    #   use  dphys-swapfile swap[on|off]  for that

    172715c3-abba-4a4b-b81e-47c9bbe28faf    /owncloud       ext4 permissions,locale=en_us.utf8 0 1

    /etc> > mount /dev/sda1 /owncloud; mount|grep sda
    /dev/sda1 on /owncloud type ext4 (rw,relatime)

Any ideas why this wouldn't work?

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Couple of things going on here. First, the /etc/fstab entry was missing the all-important UUID= in column 1. Oops.

Secondly, I began receiving this on mount attempts:

mount: /owncloud: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

Errors were found in syslog, such as:

/etc> tail /var/log/syslog
Apr 29 13:50:32 owncloud dhcpcd[393]: unrelated
Apr 29 13:51:39 owncloud systemd[1]: owncloud.mount: Succeeded.
Apr 29 13:51:39 owncloud systemd[622]: owncloud.mount: Succeeded.
Apr 29 13:51:39 owncloud systemd[1260]: owncloud.mount: Succeeded.
Apr 29 13:51:43 owncloud kernel: [ 1872.011604] EXT4-fs (sda1): Unrecognized mount option "permissions" or missing value
Apr 29 13:52:36 owncloud dhcpcd[393]: unrelated
Apr 29 13:52:45 owncloud kernel: [ 1933.657532] EXT4-fs (sda1): Unrecognized mount option "gid=33" or missing value
Apr 29 13:53:51 owncloud dhcpcd[393]: unrelated
Apr 29 13:53:53 owncloud kernel: [ 2002.026605] EXT4-fs (sda1): Unrecognized mount option "permissions" or missing value
Apr 29 13:54:11 owncloud kernel: [ 2019.989320] EXT4-fs (sda1): Unrecognized mount option "locale=en_us.utf8" or missing value

Turns out that none of the options I had specified were valid. I changed everything from the permissions option through locale to nofail - and all is well.

I hope this answer will benefit someone.