Fstab

From Free net encyclopedia

The fstab (for file systems table) file is commonly found on Unix and Unix-like systems and is part of the system configuration. The fstab file typically lists all used disks and disk partitions, and indicates how they are to be used or otherwise integrated into the overall system's file system.

Traditionally, the fstab was only read by programs, and not written. However, more modern system administration tools can automatically build and edit fstab, or act as graphical editors for it. It is the duty of the system administrator to properly create and maintain this file.

The file may have other names on a given Unix variant; for example, it is /etc/vfstab on Solaris.

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Example

The following is an example of a fstab file on a Red Hat Linux system:

# device name		mount point		fs-type	options		dump-freq pass-num
LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0

# my removable media
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             auto    noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

# my NTFS Windows XP partition
/dev/hda1               /mnt/WinXP              ntfs    ro,defaults     0 0

/dev/hda6               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

# my files partition shared by windows and linux
/dev/hda7               /mnt/shared             vfat    umask=000       0 0

( kudzu is an option specific to Red Hat and Fedora Core )

The first column indicates the device name or other means of locating the partition or data source. The second column indicates where the data is to be attached to the filesystem. The third column indicates the filesystem type, or algorithm to use to interpret the filesystem. The fourth column gives options, including if the filesystem should be mounted at boot. The fifth column adjusts the archiving schedule for the partition (used by dump). The sixth column indicates the order in which the fsck utility will scan the partitions for errors when the computer powers on. A value of zero in either of the last 2 columns disables the corresponding feature (http://www.humbug.org.au/talks/fstab/fstab_structure.html).

To get more information about the fstab file you can read the man page about it.

The Kfstab graphical configuration utility is available for KDE for editing fstab.

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