The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

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I don't think "give up on Arch" is an acceptable answer but I'd honestly recover from a backup because it's easier and more straightforward. If you don't have a backup then use it as a lesson and set up at least a basic one, it makes it trivial to distro hop or recover from things like this.
 
Aidan said:
It isn't that much of a pain to manually set up /etc/fstab unless you have a convoluted setup. Manually type it out and reboot, see if the other disks mount. Not sure why an update would touch your fstab or anything with Brave but it's more important to fix it than dig around trying to find out why right now.
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I do not fully understand what to put in the options part of fstab. Either way this doesn't fix that I can no longer see or access partitions from dolphin. I might try again later. See if I can get my drives to mount and be accessible.

prollyanotherlurker said:
I do genuinely just recommend giving up on arch. If that's what you ended up doing.

Install mint, maybe fedora. run that for a while. If you really want to use arch. Come back to it later.
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I was running arch because mint is like 10 years behind windows. I use features on a daily basis that are basically brand new for endeavourOS. HDR specifically. Like switching from windows to linux feels like going back multiple years in terms of features. Arch just happens to be the least behind.
 
Aidan said:
I don't think "give up on Arch" is an acceptable answer but I'd honestly recover from a backup because it's easier and more straightforward. If you don't have a backup then use it as a lesson and set up at least a basic one, it makes it trivial to distro hop or recover from things like this.
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I'm saying this. Because I just have a feeling, at this point arch might not be a great option for them. And they're probably going to run into some serious problems down the line again.

For me, I haven't had anything like this happen, but also, by the time I moved to arch, I was pretty comfortable on linux already. Which is probably why I haven't had any actual issues in my time using it.

I think using something that isn't constantly getting updates, especially if they are running a full desktop. Especially something like kde that's already a buggy mess, with 200 dependencies, even with stable distros. It's going to lead to some issues.
 
The Saltening said:
I do not fully understand what to put in the options part of fstab. Either way this doesn't fix that I can no longer see or access partitions from dolphin. I might try again later. See if I can get my drives to mount and be accessible.


I was running arch because mint is like 10 years behind windows. I use features on a daily basis that are basically brand new for endeavourOS. HDR specifically. Like switching from windows to linux feels like going back multiple years in terms of features. Arch just happens to be the least behind.
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Then fedora will probably work for you well enough.
 
Aidan said:
I don't think "give up on Arch" is an acceptable answer but I'd honestly recover from a backup because it's easier and more straightforward. If you don't have a backup then use it as a lesson and set up at least a basic one, it makes it trivial to distro hop or recover from things like this.
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Yeah. I need to setup a backup system. I could setup a second pc with large drives to store backups.
prollyanotherlurker said:
Yeah, that's something I don't think I have ever ran into. idk what files you ended up doing that on. But you can definitely mess up some stuff if you started messing around in /usr or /etc without knowing what you were changing if those happened to be the files.
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Those were the folders I was in.
Fcret said:
Please do not tell me you tried to second-guess the package manager.

What command did you run exactly?
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It wouldn't let me run any updates. So I googled it and followed the instructions. The updates were like core system updates and kernal shit.

I ran the pacman -Syu and yay to do updates. I did not use syy or anything. Just syu and yay.

This was my exact issue.
 
The Saltening said:
I do not fully understand what to put in the options part of fstab.
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Code: 
# <device>                                <dir> <type> <options>                                        <dump> <fsck>
UUID=0a3407de-014b-458b-b5c1-848e92a327a3 /     ext4 defaults                                           0      1
UUID=CBB6-24F2                            /boot vfat defaults,nodev,nosuid,noexec,fmask=0177,dmask=0077 0      2
UUID=f9fe0b69-a280-415d-a03a-a32752370dee none  swap defaults                                           0      0
UUID=b411dc99-f0a0-4c87-9e05-184977be8539 /home ext4 defaults                                           0      2
White space will be formatted slightly off but it isn't strict anyway, just used as delimiter. I recommend using UUID but you can use LABEL= if there is one or a file (/dev/sda1, /swapfile) but UUID is more robust.

<dir> is the mount point
<type> is the file system type so your windows would be ntfs and any linux drives are probably ext4 in your case.
<options> you may have to play with to get it exactly how you had it but you can start with "defaults" and it will probably be usable, maybe slightly less convenient
<dump> Set it to 0
<fsck> is for when it does the file system checks. 0 for do not check. 1 for checking first, 2 for checking after 1.

The Saltening said:
Yeah. I need to setup a backup system. I could setup a second pc with large drives to store backups.
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In this case a single hard drive would get you back up and if that isn't sufficient then yes you need to set up something for the task. If you don't want to spend money on that for now then an external drive backing up only what you really need to recover would still be a nice bit of comfort. Rsync works great for this and you already have it.
The Saltening said:
I ran the pacman -Syu and yay to do updates. I did not use syy or anything. Just syu and yay.
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Why do you use both?
 
Aidan said:
In this case a single hard drive would get you back up and if that isn't sufficient then yes you need to set up something for the task. If you don't want to spend money on that for now then an external drive backing up only what you really need to recover would still be a nice bit of comfort. Rsync works great for this and you already have it.
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I am out of space for drives. So I would want to setup a second pc for backups with like multiple 4TB+ drives. Just 1 for now since my entire linux drive is 2TB.

Aidan said:
Why do you use both?
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I run yay 99% of the time but sometimes I run pacman. Usually just to be redundant and make sure nothing got missed. IDK.

How would I access the drives after mounting if they are not in dolphin? And what is a good mount point? Can I set anything? Or is there a best practice?

I need to go to bed so I wont be fucking with it anymore tonight. But tomorrow I am going to try and fix this. If I can't get it working I am going to reinstall and start over I guess. All I would like to save from my linux drive rn are my godot projects. So I will need to get those transferred over somehow.
 
The Saltening said:
the main disk is mounted fine. Nothing is installed on the other drives. They are my windows drive and my storage drives.

I need a way to like rebuild my partition list or whatever. The same thing it does when first installing. I can see my drives in a partition manager but I have no way of mounting. fstab is completely blank aside from the partitions on my main disk. I tried manually adding a drive and it didnt work.
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if you are talking about the fstab in the livecd it won't have anything until you mount the drive arch is installed on (the /etc/fstab on the liveiso).

it depends what you are trying to actually do from the iso.

you can mount those drive you had with the arch iso on it from anything else. like an ubuntu live iso. and copy files off to another usb, or edit them from the liveiso. then boot the fixed system.

Hard to give proper advice in a thread like this. Without knowing everything else going on, and your plan, or what you are wanting to do from here.

The Saltening said:
I am out of space for drives. So I would want to setup a second pc for backups with like multiple 4TB+ drives. Just 1 for now since my entire linux drive is 2TB.


I run yay 99% of the time but sometimes I run pacman. Usually just to be redundant and make sure nothing got missed. IDK.

How would I access the drives after mounting if they are not in dolphin? And what is a good mount point? Can I set anything? Or is there a best practice?

I need to go to bed so I wont be fucking with it anymore tonight. But tomorrow I am going to try and fix this. If I can't get it working I am going to reinstall and start over I guess. All I would like to save from my linux drive rn are my godot projects. So I will need to get those transferred over somehow.
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open a terminal.


you can run the command

lsblk

that will output all the drives and partitions it detects.

when you see the name of the one you want to mount. run

sudo mount /dev/(whatever the drive name is) /mnt (or whereever you want to mount it)

then you can open that up in dolphin, or move there in the terminal.
 
prollyanotherlurker said:
if you are talking about the fstab in the livecd it won't have anything until you mount the drive arch is installed on (the /etc/fstab on the liveiso).

it depends what you are trying to actually do from the iso.

you can mount those drive you had with the arch iso on it from anything else. like an ubuntu live iso. and copy files off to another usb, or edit them from the liveiso. then boot the fixed system.

Hard to give proper advice in a thread like this. Without knowing everything else going on, and your plan, or what you are wanting to do from here.
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basically dolphin used to show my partitions. I would mount them from there and use my other drives. After the update dolphin doesnt show partitions at all. Also the mount command does not work and kicks out an fstab error. Whatever automated process the install did to make drives mountable has been completely nuked.

The error is like "/dev/sdb2 not in fstab" or something

I might have used the mount command wrong. I will try again tomorrow.
 
Code: 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/nvme1n1p2 during curtin installation
/dev/disk/by-uuid/0a7abf##REDACTED## / ext4 defaults 0 1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/nvme1n1p1 during curtin installation
/dev/disk/by-uuid/##REDACTED## /boot/efi vfat defaults 0 1
/swap.img       none    swap    sw      0       0

UUID=e5d##REDACTED## /mnt/dsk/1 auto defaults 0 0
UUID=f28##REDACTED## /mnt/dsk/2 auto defaults 0 0
UUID=22b##REDACTED## /mnt/dsk/3 auto defaults 0 0
UUID=fbf##REDACTED## /mnt/dsk/4 auto defaults 0 0
/mnt/dsk/*/ /mnt/pool fuse.mergerfs func.readdir=cor,func.getattr=newest,lazy-umount-mountpoint=true,cache.files=off,moveonenospc=true,dropcacheonclose=true,minfreespace=10G,category.create=pfrd,fsname=mergerfs 0 0

UUID=6d6##REDACTED## /mnt/wrk auto nofail 0 0
UUID=cf1##REDACTED## /mnt/dsk/5 auto defaults 0 0
UUID=866##REDACTED## /mnt/dsk/6 auto defaults 0 0
UUID=8e3##REDACTED## /mnt/etc auto nofail 0 0
if it helps here's what a normal /etc/fstab should look like

Sounds like you're running KDE so KDE Partition Manager would be a GUI way to look at what's going on with your partitions, but it isn't as straightforward as gnome-disks so you might as well install that.
 
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The Saltening said:
basically dolphin used to show my partitions. I would mount them from there and use my other drives. After the update dolphin doesnt show partitions at all. Also the mount command does not work and kicks out an fstab error. Whatever automated process the install did to make drives mountable has been completely nuked.

The error is like "/dev/sdb2 not in fstab" or something

I might have used the mount command wrong. I will try again tomorrow.
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If these are windows . You might need to install the n2fs tools needed to mount it. I don't use any windows stuff so I don't know what's required for it. But there is likely a package. You will need to find the name for it. Or maybe someone here knows.

Then you might need to specify the partition type.

Though with that error. You might have just not specified the mount location. Or something. Or not typed a full path. Something like that. If the partition is /dev/sdb2

The exact command will be.

sudo mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt

That will mount it on /mnt

Definitely don't mess around with your fstab to mount your other drives. That's just for automounting. Usually used on boot up. But for removable drives you are probably better off using another tool. And not messing with it at all for a one time thing.
 
The Saltening said:
I am out of space for drives. So I would want to setup a second pc for backups with like multiple 4TB+ drives. Just 1 for now since my entire linux drive is 2TB.
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I usually recommend externals for a cheap and usually "good enough" backup, 2TB is easy to manage with that. If you want to set up a dedicated computer, look into setting up a NAS. You can continue the free route and do TrueNAS (FreeBSD) or OpenMediaVault (Debian) and set it up yourself, it isn't that hard since they have tools to do most of the heavy lifting and good web interfaces. You don't need fancy hardware but they support it. Definitely better than an external since you get redundancy and flexibility but steeper barrier to entry and some setup time versus using a drive you plug in sometimes.
If you set up a NAS, plan it out, try to get a cheap case or reuse an old one lying around, at least to start. Label your drives with stickers or tape as well, it might help down the road if one of them goes bad, it's easier to identify and swap out.
The Saltening said:
I run yay 99% of the time but sometimes I run pacman. Usually just to be redundant and make sure nothing got missed. IDK.
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Don't do that. Use whichever on you prefer and stick with it. I don't see why it would mess things up here but it's redundant at best.
The Saltening said:
How would I access the drives after mounting if they are not in dolphin? And what is a good mount point? Can I set anything? Or is there a best practice?
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I don't know about "best practice," I use lsblk to get the UUIDs.
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,UUID,FSTYPE
You need to mount them to see that though, so boot into whatever and mount them and take a picture or write it down. If you can boot normally, then all the better.
sudo mount /dev/sdx1 /mnt/mountdir
Make sure /mnt/mountdir exists before mounting. After this and fixing fstab you should backup fstab somewhere. I've copied and pasted mine into a dm to myself before.
 
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use /dev/sdX only for temporary mounts, as there's no guarantee the same drives will have the same order next time (so one drive could be /dev/sdb one boot but be /dev/sda the next time you restart, messing everything up)
 
The Saltening said:
I run yay 99% of the time but sometimes I run pacman. Usually just to be redundant and make sure nothing got missed. IDK.
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yay just uses pacman behind the scenes. There's zero reason you should be using both. Please do not use both.

Post your lsblk and some description about your filesystem layout and someone here will probably be able to write you an fstab.
 
Do you have any .pacnew files? People don't always merge those which can lead to problems. When I started out way back when I forgot to merge them and it eventually led to issues. I now just run a hook to check them after every update.
 
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