Ubuntu – Where Does Ubuntu Execute Hdparm.conf Settings

There are at least two problems here.

The first one is that the script /lib/udev/hdparm that parses /etc/hdparm.conf expects that the name of the device to be configured is in environment variable $DEVNAME in the same form as it is in configuration file. The udev rule, at least in 9.04, specifies that the device name is of form [sh]d[a-z]. Of course, since the device name depends on other plugged-in drives, this is quite useless. The bug report has been open for a while: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hdparm/+bug/222458

Another problem in the setup is that the udev script seems to be never called for SATA drives.

You can start the service manually by using

sudo start avahi-daemon

and not using

sudo avahi-daemon start

If you want it so the service starts at boot. You need to have a look at adding a symlink to /etc/rc2.d/ to point at /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon. It is probably easier to read up on the programs sysv-rc-conf or update-rc.d

For mounting a disk you need to edit /etc/fstab with the correct details. You need to know the device you are trying to mount (eg /dev/sdb1), the mount point (eg /mnt/data)and the filesystem.

The entry in fstab will look something like this:

/dev/sdb1    /mnt/data    ext3    defaults    0    2