Yesterday I helped a coworker figure out the best way to have Linux mount an NTFS partition at startup. It was an interesting little problem because there are multiple solutions but only a single “correct” solution.
At first I questioned the need to do anything at all – my computer apparently mounts my NTFS drive on its own but I couldn’t remember how.
Before I found the ultimate solution, one approach my coworker attemped was to have gnome execute a script at login which used the mount command. This didn’t work; he forgot to use gksudo and anyway the script never seemed to run.
Then I remembered fstab and the rest is history. If you need to accomplish the same thing, be sure to read his fstab blog post.