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I have a Raspberry Pi 3b running the latest version of OpenMediaVault, which I installed using the official-ish script onto a clean and updated Raspberry-Pi OS installation that I created with PiBakery. I have a 250GB Samsung Evo SSD attached to it via USB3. The SSD has a single NTFS partition containing media files.

When I plug the drive into the pi it automounts with no problems and I can access it and the media files under the path /media/pi/ntfs (ntfs is also the drive label). The media files play in omxplayer with no problems.

$ uname -a
Linux file-server 4.19.66-v7+ #1253 SMP Thu Aug 15 11:49:46 BST 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux

$ blkid
/dev/mmcblk0p1: LABEL="boot" UUID="A75B-DC79" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="d6ccd585-01"
/dev/mmcblk0p2: LABEL="rootfs" UUID="485ec5bf-9c78-45a6-9314-32be1d0dea38" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="d6ccd585-02"
/dev/sda1: LABEL="ntfs" UUID="01D6C8FA8EC2AB30" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="60c85df0-1596-01d6-f82e-6430cb0aeb00"

Despite this drive working fine, OMV won't allow me to share it. In fact, when I try to share a folder, there are no devices at all in the device dropdown.

I have found a similar question, but it was the result of using a mechanical disk and not having enough power to drive it resulting in it not being mounted by the pi. My problem is different in that I can access the disk.

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  • I do not think this is actually a Pi error - there is a new post on the OMV forum stating the code does not support shares on NTFS - reads like it only uses the OS level forum.openmediavault.org/index.php?thread/… sounds messy. Best to raise this on their forum...
    – user115418
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 1:06
  • I had the same problem with Fat32 and ext4
    – Software Engineer
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 1:09
  • Ouch. There is a 'quirk' if the disks have been used then OMV added openmediavault.readthedocs.io/en/5.x/administration/storage/… maybe worth checking through this. Take lots of care with delete all fstab lines except rootfs and swap as it can leave you with an unusable system!
    – user115418
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 2:35

1 Answer 1

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I got a clue to the right solution from @Andyroo's comments to the question. Andyroo suggested that I read the OMV docs and edit fstab. Unfortunately, that didn't work because my drive was being mounted via the runtime automounter, which uses mtab, not the boot automounter which uses fstab. (I think that's correct now, thanks to @Goldilocks for pointing out my error in the original version of this answer).

The official docs suggest editing /etc/fstab and removing the automounted drive by deleting the lines referring to it. Once this is done the drive can be mounted through the OMV webui and it can then run register the drive in its config file and make the entry in fstab for you. But, RPi-OS runtime automounts drives into /proc/self/mounts (symlinked from /etc/mtab) and its related files (mountinfo and mountstats in the same directory), not /etc/fstab which is used only when a drive is to be automatically remounted at boot-time. The /etc/fstab file is left untouched by this mounting mechanism and therefore there is no entry to delete.

But, if all we need to do is unmount the drive then have OMV mount it for us, then umount can come to the rescue. This tool works properly on RPi-OS and is almost trivial to use. Once you identify the device using blkid (/dev/sda in my case), one can unmount it with umount /dev/sda and suddenly life is good. The drive is no longer accessible -- it is unmounted.

OMV still shows the drive and the filesystem in the WebUI, but now we can mount it (with the aptly named 'mount' button) and a few seconds later the device appears in the shared folder's device list, just as it always should have done.

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6
  • Glad you got there - I've not seen the Pi auto mount unless I'm running the GUI version. Is this new to the 'lite' download or do you have the GUI active as well?
    – user115418
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 12:20
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    "RasperryPi-OS is weird and doesn't use fstab in the "normal" way" -> This is certainly not true, FYI, so whatever led you to that conclusion should be regarded as a dubious source. I think it may be that you have conflated two different sorts of automounting -- that done at boot time based on fstab, and that done during runtime by an automount daemon, which may or may not consult fstab, but would never modify it in any way.
    – goldilocks ♦
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 15:04
  • Ah, I see; thanks. So, when I reboot with the drive plugged in it automounts again via the runtime automount daemon, not via an entry in fstab. I had read about 30 different QA's about this and obviously got the wrong idea. I'll update my answer.
    – Software Engineer
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 20:00
  • @Andyroo -- I'm using the latest full version of Raspberry Pi OS, which seems to exhibit this behaviour by default.
    – Software Engineer
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 20:05
  • Yup always has done - it's part of the GUI file manager function that when it's running, USB drives are auto mounted. If you use raspi-config to start the Pi in console mode (with or without auto-login) then you have to mount the drives manually. I think the aim is to make it more 'user friendly' i.e. Windows / Mac like when they are sat at a screen.
    – user115418
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 20:17

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