Do I have to manually mount USB on Fedora server?

I am used to using ubuntu and the server automounted usb’s at /media/user/ however, Fedora server doesn’t do that. I looked in both /media and /run/media (which is where Fedora desktop mounts them), but found nothing. I then manually mounted it by label from /dev/disks. So my question is: does Fedora server mount plugged in USB devices automatically, or do I need to manually do it each time? thanks

Fedora Server doesn’t automount USB devices. The use case in our heads is a server, stacked in racks in a datacenter. So you can’t plug in anything anywhere :slight_smile:

But it is a nice idea to optionally enable such a feature. I’ll put it on our list of possible improvements and feature additions.

What is your use case, by the way? (As a member of the Server Working group I’m just curious what is is used for)

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Thanks for your reply. Yes, I agree I am not in the majority use case here. I am configuring a backup server at home now and want to consolidate stuff from various usb devices. I can transfer at much higher speeds by plugging them directly into the server than plugging them into my machine and then sending it over lan. I think there are a fair amount of home server users, so this option may be good to include - it doesn’t cost anything.

I came from Ubuntu and am really liking Fedora by the way, both Desktop and server!

I can see a potential security issue with enabling USB by default on servers.

Anyone could then plug in a usb device into the server and access the content by default since it was auto-mounted. If it does not auto-mount then it requires admin privileges to mount the device.

I think it reasonable to assume that your home server case is a small enough percentage of users that the auto-mount option should be at best a special config and not default for servers.

I think you could easily create a udev rule to do what you wish in this respect. Or even use a workstation install as the server.

I agree it’s not really necessary, but am also wondering why it is enabled on Ubuntu server by default…

Don’t worry, I wrote “optional feature”, that a system administrator must explicitly enable for a special use case, e.g. as a system service. It would save the sysadmin from having to dig into the depths of the system himself.

It depends on the projected use case (data center vs. home server, etc.) and the weighting of criteria (e.g. security vs. comfort). Several years ago, I was completely caught off guard that my freshly installed Debian (or was it Ubuntu?) system started up without a firewall installed and enabled. With Fedora this was completely impossible even then.

It’s all Linux, but there are subtle, but significant differences.

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That is a difference you would need to ask the Ubuntu developers about. Each distro has its own work groups and policies and they are often not the same policies as other distros. Some things are more security related and some are more convenience related.

I used to have a NAS but I switched to external drives, which ended up being more annoying to deal with. I had the idea to set-up vsftpd and have it automatically share whatever drive I plug into the server, and was looking around to see if I needed to do anything to get drives to auto-mount on Fedora Server. I found this thread :stuck_out_tongue:

Edit: I found using fstab and specific UUIDs to be a better option!