/etc/fstab under Linux

There are three well written man pages which deal with /etc/fstab, so this talk will mainly be a merger of them, focusing naturally on the file and its format.

Primary man-pages of interest.

• fstab
• mount
• nfs

A typical fstab looks something like the following:

#
# /etc/fstab
#
# <device>      <mountpoint>    <filesystemtype><options>  <dump> <fsckorder>

/dev/hdb5	/            	ext2     	defaults       	1 	1
/dev/hdb2	/home        	ext2     	defaults       	1 	2
/dev/hdc	/mnt/cdrom   	iso9660  	noauto,ro,user 	0 	0
/dev/hda1	/mnt/dos/c   	msdos    	defaults       	0 	0
/dev/hdb1	/mnt/dos/d   	msdos    	defaults       	0 	0
/dev/fd0	/mnt/floppy  	ext2     	noauto,user    	0 	0
/dev/hdb4	none         	ignore   	defaults       	0 	0

none     	/proc        	proc     	defaults
/dev/hdb3	none         	swap     	sw

Note that this system has two IDE partitions, one which is used as /, and the other used as /home. It also has two DOS partitions which are mounted under /mnt. Note the user option provided for the cdrom, and the floppy drive. This is one of the many default parameters you can specify. In this case it means that any user can mount a cdrom, or floppy disk. Other options will be dealt with later.

The /etc/fstab file.

• The structure of /etc/fstab.
• File-system types supported.
• File-system mount options.
• nfs & /etc/fstab

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