Is it possible to automount a partition on a dummy location?

There's a partition on my drive that I don't use, called /dev/sda8. This partition is not listed in /etc/fstab so it will pop up in the Unity launcher when I boot my system.

I don't want this to happen, so I usually create a directory in /mnt, for example /mnt/placeholder and then write a new entry in /etc/fstab:

/dev/sda8 /mnt/placeholder btrfs defaults 0 0

I find this solution a bit dirty, though. There's now an unnecessary directory in /mnt. I'd much prefer something like:

/dev/sda8 none btrfs defaults 0 0

Is it possible to automount a partition on a dummy location? Ideally, it would be protected against reading/writing.

I'm aware of the fact that I can create a hidden directory in /mnt, but that's not the solution I'm looking for. Thanks.

Solution 1:

Disclaimer I do not know if it works and maybe not for this 3-years old bug which seems not to be fixed for Trusty. If you run 14.10 maybe you're lucky...

I should be possible to tell directly to the disk manager to hide the disk; I can't test because I have not spare partition on this PC.

Open "Disk utility" via the dash, and select the "mount option" for your partition:

After that, you should be able to tell the system not to mount it at boot and not make it available in the graphical interface:

...good luck!