Re: fstab vs. mtab

[David Teague <dbt@elentari.cs.wcu.edu>]

On Fri, 25 Feb 2000, Alex McCool wrote:

> Could someone explain the diff between fstab and mtab?


Certainly:  /etc/fstab is the file that tells the system what to
mount at boot whereas /etc/mtab is the current list of files mounted
at any given time.

This is incomplete: The kernel has to know what to mount as root
independently of fstab, and you can change the mount status of /
without be able to write mtab by using the -n option

See man rdev for some of the details of what the kernel needs to
know and how to tell it.

See man mount for some of mount details. 

Here is an example from /etc/init.d/checkroot.sh:

              mount -n -o remount,rw /   

which remounts root rw when /etc/ is on a read-only file system
without writing mtab.

David

--David
David Teague, dbt@cs.wcu.edu
Debian GNU/Linux Because software support is free, timely,
                 useful, technically accurate, and friendly.
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