Hard drive confusion

I am using ubuntu 24.04

I have two hard drives. My names for them is 4tb and Misc. In discs I have also given these names to them in mount options display name and file system name. Both are shown as mounted at /mnt/UUID thing. Their names also appear in Files/Other Locations.

My problem is how, exactly, should I refer to them address wise. Can I use /mnt/name or /mnt/UUID? It used to be that I could put these name into the Discs program and that is how they were mounted, ie. /mnt/name now, no longer.

Terminal, incidentally, no longer will use the name but only /mnt/UUID

Thoughts?

With newer gpt partitioning there are two labels, one is for file system (as default mount) and other as drive. And you can create a different name for a default mount and in fstab use that for mount. I once labelled partiiton Data and mounted as data. And then had issued knowing what is what.

You can see labels:
lsblk -o name,fstype,label,partlabel,uuid,fsavail

Thank you for the reply…

I continue to be a bit confused. For instance, when I run the program ‘Files’ I have a list when it starts. It has Home, Documents, etc. I think my problem is that The ‘Home’ for instance, that they have is really /home/greg/Home (as far as i can figure out. But Home remains Home whilst /home is something else entirely (basically according to Terminal. I have messed with this stuff for a long time and, I suspect, I have also really never figured this stuff out. I also realize this is kinda crazy.

My problem is that I am installing and re-starting Sabnzb+ and trying to setup categories for dealing with nzb stuff. Sabnzb wants to know, when its doing its nzb stuff where to put stuff. There are three places, complete, incomplete, and next which are the folders for this. I tell sabnzbd that its at /home/Downloads and I find them in very strange places indeed. I then did a search on “downloads” and find there are all sorts of places named - “downloads”. Its the same with “home”. I have also noticed that Upper case and lower are not real important either.

Insofar as sabnzbd+ is concerned;
I used to set the addresses as: /mnt/4tb, etc
Now I think I have to use something like: /mnt/b8300f5a-59c4-407a-acd7-59444ab97944

I am just wondering on others thoughts on all of this or even if it makes any difference at all or is important. I do know that its giving me fits because things are not working as i think/thought.

It is not my thought to stir anything, or really bother anybody. Should you decide not to reply I will understand as this, I think, is simply confusing me on stuff I must have understood at some time.

I stopped using UUIDs for any mounts. For internal partitions I create mount points & mount them in fstab. For all others I create labels, so default mount is by label.

Note that case is important in Linux, so Documents is a totally different place from documents. Better to label a partition at 4tb than use UUID. But that seems like a very large partition and then difficult to completely backup.

Never used sabnzbd+, so do not know what it does.

Like @oldfred I am also not familiar with this application, never used it.

https://sabnzbd.org/wiki/advanced/directory-setup

I think you may be a little mixed up on paths in Ubuntu.

Understand how /home is used… and pardon me if you already know this, its just not clear to me:

When you see this at the beginning of a path:

~/

This refers to the current logged-in user’s home directory. So in your case this equates to:

/home/greg

Now, an Ubuntu install creates a Documents & Downloads folders automatically for users. The correct path to these are:

/home/greg/Documents
/home/greg/Downloads

same as:

~/Documents
~/Downloads

If you created a /home/Downloads
then you will have both:

/home/Downloads
/home/greg/Downloads

Double check your paths that you set up in the application, and understand the absolute paths to these locations.

1 Like

Good to know. Thank you!

I REALLY needed that one!!

I also suspect that there is a difference in Home and /home as well. I haven’t figured that one out yet. Haven’t had a use but I will try and figure it out.

Thank you for the reply…

How do I deal with fstab and the rest. I do not understand. This is embarrassing as I have never had this problem before which means that I have, unfortunately forgotten. Getting old is not fun.

thanks again!

Add unique labels to every partition and run the lsblk command I posted above to show labels & UUIDs. You can use gparted, disks & command line to add labels. These labels would be for those partitions you only mount occasionally, but helps to know what every partition is.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RenameUSBDrive

fstab mount by UUID or label, also other choices, best only for internal drives, but can use extra parameters for partitions on external devices.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fstab

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Persistent_block_device_naming
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab#Examples

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab

Thanks for the reply.

I have a problem. I have no idea what fstab is. I looked it up. To find it I need Files to give me Stuff like Ubuntu and hard drives. It used to have a little button so that I could get that stuff. Now, however, it just does not show me that stuff. I checked with Disks and it told me that all my hard drives and 1tb (where ubuntu is) are up, running and mounted but I can no longer get to them. This means that I cannot look at Ubuntu either (my 1tb drive)

Half hour later:
Now my Files shows me my two hard drives (it didn’t a half an hour ago, along with 2 hard drives) but does not show me Ubuntu which is my 1tb drive with all of my Ubuntu on it. I may be doing this as I change stuff in Files to try and get it to display everything plugged in)

I have no idea why this is happening or why.

Since nobody has got back I will add:
my 1tb drive:
1 partition table (msdos (created by creator disk))
/dev/sdb1 ext4/ 953.87GB 882.84GB
This drive has all my Ubuntu on it.
I can label it here using GParted (If I should I would label it “Ubuntu” which may mean that Files would tell me this and then I can get it)
Discs tells me that has 948GB free (7,4% full)

Have you tried in terminal running lsblk -f or the command I posted above?
Can you run this to see all partitions?
sudo parted -l

Links above should have explained fstab with is where system mounts internal partitions.
cat /etc/fstab
I typically have several installs, so rather than “ubuntu” I label with code name.

fred@z170-noble:~$ lsblk -f
NAME        FSTYPE FSVER LABEL     UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sda                                                                                    
├─sda1      vfat   FAT32 esp-a     F496-1330                                           
├─sda2      ext4   1.0   noble_a   8ccd5809-5e68-435e-a140-5fd50d88f56c                
├─sda4      ext4   1.0   backup-a  dd4e4a2e-4785-4441-91b0-28234b98e625                
├─sda6      ext4   1.0   data-a    f9537995-8b44-4abb-b5fb-ec27023f57b2                
├─sda7      swap   1               ce2f2c10-8267-4fa4-9720-b1cea0718221                
└─sda8      ext4   1.0             ce1e9d19-656e-40e9-b0cf-b0c6d576e84f                
nvme0n1                                                                                
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat   FAT32 ESP_NVME  4954-C122                             481.9M     6% /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 ext4   1.0   noble     811e6de9-cd5e-4983-9f45-5e72e73cb578   15.4G    41% /var/snap/firefox/common/host-hunspell
│                                                                                      /
├─nvme0n1p3 ext4   1.0   questing  29ad3c7c-791e-4002-bc1f-e6007fb2e000                
├─nvme0n1p4 ext4   1.0   jammy     9da6b198-e2ca-4e27-8a18-6daf4ecfc324                
└─nvme0n1p5 ext4   1.0   nvme_data 1a44f4af-6780-4bbd-ad0b-6385ed30830b   54.4G    73% /mnt/data

Here is what I have:
greg@greg-HP-Compaq-8200-Elite-CMT-PC:~$ lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS

sda
├─sda1
│ vfat FAT32 ADD8-BD85 504.8M 1% /boot/efi
├─sda2

└─sda3
ext4 1.0 Main 0ec2f0ed-adc1-40fa-9357-ee0b57cd2c39 858.1G 3% /

This is not on my regular computer. This is a new little on, lenovo thinkcentre that I just got working. On this one, incidentally Files is working just fine (as is, so far, everything else)

In your last post, you show only the output for one drive, the drive on which you have Ubuntu installed (sda). sda1 is an EFI partition and sda3 is the Ubuntu filesystem partition. No indication of what is on sda2. If you are having a problem with an external drive, you need to have it attached when you run the command so correct information shows. In an earlier post, you showed the output of a 1TB drive listed as sdb with an msdos partition table. Is that what you are using for Ubuntu as drive with EFI partitions are generally gpt?

If you open a terminal on Ubuntu and run the command: ls / it will show all the standard directories in the root of the filesystem and one of these will be home. There will be no ‘Home’ directory unless a user created it.

fstab is located under the /etc directory and is the filesystem table an contains entries for partitions to mount and make accessible on boot. There are many sites available online with example entries to use.

I tell sabnzbd that its at /home/Downloads

I’m not familiar with that software but there will be no /home/Downloads directory and as pointed out above, that directory (Downloads) will be under the /home/username directory, in your case /home/greg.

On Ubuntu and a number of other Linux systems, external drives are made available under the directory /media/username (/media/greg in your case).

Removed snaps from your drive list. They are just the snap apps and not drives.

If switching systems, you need to start a new post with that system. We cannot deal with two issues in one post without getting confused on which we are dealing with.

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