On a standard Linux system, filesystems listed in /etc/fstab are mounted by a startup script, which runs mount -a. On an empeg there is no startup script; init and the player just mount the filesystems they know about. The listings in /etc/fstab are just there to keep tools such as df happy.

Ah, that was the clue I was missing.

If you want /dev/hda2 mounted as /usr/local automatically, you'll have to do it yourself in a non-Empeg-supplied init script.

Yes, I tried doing that. I had an M99mounthda2 pre-init script, but it didn't work for me. Possibly because I didn't have it exit, though that may not matter. I'll poke around a bit more when I get home.

I currently have everything sitting on /drive0, because I couldn't even get it to mount on /progams0.

Edit: Ah, I see that the pre-init script should have been named with an N, instead of an M. Now I've fixed that, mounting /usr/local has no problems. I feel accomplished.