How to mount a shared VMWare folder on startup

fstabmountvmware

So I'm following this article on how to mount a shared vmware folder.

I can successfully mount with the following command:

mount -t vmhgfs .host:/foo /home/user/Documents/foo

However, I can't seem to get it work with /etc/fstab. I added this line:

.host:/foo /home/user/Documents/foo vmhgfs defaults 0 0

When I start up my machine, it prompts me to press S to skip mount or M for manual recovery and it won't mount. I'm forced to press S to skip to get into the OS. How can I fix this?

Edit: So I've found that VMware is already automatically mounting it to /mnt/hgfs/foo so my temporary workaround is a symlink to that directory. Is it possible to override this behavior so that I don't need a symlink?

Best Answer

Alternatively you could put the mount command you use at the commandline in /etc/rc.local.

1. blkid

Works whether device is mounted or not.

$ blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="XXXX" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda2: UUID="XXXX" TYPE="LVM2_member"

2. mount

This is only useful once the block device has been mounted.

$ sudo mount | grep /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext4 (rw,relatime,seclabel,data=ordered)

3. lsblk

Shows drive topologies, but not the filesystem types on the devices.

$ sudo lsblk -a
NAME                      MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda                         8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1                      8:1    0   500M  0 part /boot
└─sda2                      8:2    0 465.3G  0 part

tune2fs

$ tune2fs -l /dev/sda1 | grep magic
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53

Shows the magic number associated with the device, you can look these up on this site, Linux Magic Numbers. It's also in a file, often here, /usr/share/magic. You can locate it using locate /magic.

dumpe2fs

$ sudo dumpe2fs /dev/sda1 | grep magic
dumpe2fs 1.42.7 (21-Jan-2013)
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53

Same things apply as in tune2fs.

/dev/mounts

This is the "file" maintained by the kernel that's used to display devices that have been mounted. NOTE: many of the tools on this list are typically using the contents of this file.

$ sudo cat /proc/mounts | grep /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1 /boot ext4 rw,seclabel,relatime,data=ordered 0 0

file

You can also use the file command to display info about unmounted filesystems.

$ sudo file -s /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1: Linux rev 1.0 ext4 filesystem data, UUID=XXXX (needs journal recovery) (extents) (huge files)

An alternative syntax (as root):

$ file - </dev/sda1
/dev/stdin: Linux rev 1.0 ext4 filesystem data, UUID=XXXX (needs journal recovery) (extents) (huge files)

Your mounting issue

I'd suspect that the filesystem you're attempting to mount is not what you think it is. Either the entire device was formatted with a filesystem (/dev/sda), in which case you'd be mounting the entire drive. You can test this hypothesis like this:

$ sudo mount /dev/sda /mnt

Of if you need to explicitly tell what filesystem to use:

$ sudo mount -o ext2 /dev/sda /mnt

NOTE: This is generally not the case that an entire filesystem is laid down on the entire device, /dev/sda, rather they're partitioned into /dev/sda1, etc.

Or perhaps the drive has been partitioned. In this case you'd see these partitions with the above command lsblk, where they'd show up as /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc. If that's the case for you then you'll need to mount the partition instead like so:

$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Again pay special attention to the formatting used on the filesystem of the device, you'll occasionally have to specify it literally to mount.

Since your output from fdisk shows that you have /dev/sda1 I'd be inclined to think that you have your filesystem on the 1st partition.

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63  1953520064   976760001   83  Linux

So mounting it like this should do the trick:

$ sudo mount -o ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt

/etc/fstab

If the above mounting commands work then you can add this to your /etc/fstab file.

/dev/sda1 /media/HDD ext2 defaults 0 2

Systemd Unmounting Removable Drive – Troubleshooting

mnt-zeno.mount was created by systemd-fstab-generator. According to Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's explanation on debian-user mailing list:

[systemd-fstab-generator is] a program that reads /etc/fstab at boot time and generates units that translate fstab records to the systemd way of doing things [.....]

The systemd way of doing things is mount and device units, per the systemd.mount(5) and systemd.device(5) manual pages. In the raw systemd way of doing things, there's a device unit named "dev-sde1.device" which is a base requirement for a mount unit named "media-lumix\x2dphotos.mount".

After altering fstab one should either run systemctl daemon-reload (this makes systemd to reparse /etc/fstab and pick up the changes) or reboot.