How to always mount an external firewire drive?

[Maser]

Hi all...

 

99.95% of the time, I'm logged into my account when I have scheduled Retrospect to do a backup to my external firewire hard disk.

 

The other 0.05%, I'm logged out of my account. The backup script will run, but then complain (rightly) that it can't find the backup drive.

 

Is there an obvious way to keep a firewire drive from dismounting when you log out of your account and/or have a powered-on FW drive mount at startup (if the computer starts up to the login screen rather than automatically logging in?)

 

Suggestions would be appreciated!

 

- Steve

[rhwalker]

add the volume to /etc/fstab and it will get mounted by /etc/rc as the system boots into multi-user mode.

for details:

man 5 fstab

 

By default, there is not anything in this file.

[CallMeDave]

Quote:

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add the volume to /etc/fstab and it will get mounted by /etc/rc as the system boots into multi-user mode.

 

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But Russ, he specifically asked how to "keep a firewire drive from dismounting when you log out of your account..."

 

This doesn't sound like a solution to that part of his problem.

 

Steve, did you try the autodiskmount.plist modification (updated for 10.4):

 

<key>AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin</key>

<integer>1</integer>

[Maser]

Yeah, this worked:

 

defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool true

 

 

It's a "depreciated, but left for backwards compatibility" command, but it does what I expect it to.

 

It also works if I restart the computer.

 

Thanks for the tip!