Re: mtab SNAFU

["David Fox" <dfox94085@gmail.com>]

On 25 Nov 2007 10:59:25 -0500, Haines Brown <brownh@hartford-hwp.com> wrote:

> desperation I deleted the multiple instances from /etc/mtab. I should
> have consulted first, but didn't want to be pain.

That might have been the first problem. /etc/mtab is a
dynamically-created file - it is a file of all the mount points at any
given time. /etc/fstab should contain the mount points for everything
you need or want mounted on startup.

> This got me into trouble, for deleting the lines for /media/usb-key
> actually caused all lines to disapper. I tried to restore /etc/mtab

My /etc/mtab is less than 1 K so I don't see how this could fail. But
then agan, you shouldn't be restoring /etc/mtab since it is a dynamic
file.


> /dev/sdd1 on /media/usb-key type vfat
>   (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,
>   codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1)

It's not that unusual, it's basically your /etc/fstab mount info with
a few extra options thrown in.

> My intuition tells me that if I were to reboot, the /etc/mtab file will be
> reconstituted normally and my multiple mounted usb-key problem will be

Yes, that's correct. Filesystems are mounted per /etc/fstab and if
that is in good order, there shouldn't be a problem.