Download fstab file

Program s that can open the. FSTAB file. Windows NetBSD. Android Google Android. Similar extensions. How to associate the file with an installed software? Is there one way to open unknown files? Last updated. There are two parts to the process. The first part is doing some reconnaissance to identify the hard drive and to gather some information on it. We need to know that Linux can see them, and what block devices Linux is using for them.

In Linux and Unix-like operating systems, a block device is a special file that acts as an interface to a device that data can be read from and written to unless it is read-only. Block devices often represent a mass-storage unit of some kind for example, a partition on a hard disk or a CD-ROM. We can use the lsblk command to list the block devices connected to your Linux computer.

In the screenshot above, you can see that the loop devices are all given a major number of 7 meaning a loopback, or loop, device , and the minor numbers simply increment by 1 each time. A squashfs file system is created each time an application is installed using the snappy package management system. The minor numbers for the first drive, sda , run from 0 to The 0 represents the physical drive, and the minor number of 1 represents the first partition on that drive. For the second drive, sdb , the minor numbers run from 16 to The next 16 numbers, 32 to 47, are used for the minor numbers of sdc , and so on.

The kernel documentation contains a long listing of all values that the major and minor numbers can take. To de-clutter the output from lsblk we can use grep to select only the items of interest to us. On our test machine, we see:. So, we have three SCSI drives.

The other two are not mounted at all, which is to be expected for brand new drives. Actually, as this is a virtual computer, these are also virtual disks. Its major number is You can use fdisk to create a partition if required. If we use the -o output option with lsblk and add the ROTA rotating column to the display, lsblk will use a 1 to indicate a rotating storage device mechanical drive and a 0 to indicate a non-rotating storage device solid-state drive. We get an extra column on the right of the display, which is the ROTA rotating column.

That makes sense because an SSD is a non-rotating storage device. Mounting the SSD is just as simple. We tell mount which partition on which device to mount, and the mount point to mount it on. All seems well. Now we need to configure the fstab file so that these devices are mounted each time the computer is started up. The fstab file contains an entry for each file system that is mounted when your computer is restarted.

Each entry is made up of six fields. The fields are:. These fields must be specified in this order, and they must have a space or a tab between them. The man page for each file system will list the options that can be used.

Here are some of the more common options:. You can add or remove further options if some fine-tuning is required.

If only there was a neat way to get the settings you need, in the order you need to enter them into the fstab file. The mtab file is the list of currently mounted file systems.

This is in contrast to the fstab file which lists the file systems that should be mounted at boot time. The mtab file includes manually mounted file systems. We can see the contents of the mtab file using cat. We could lift those values and drop them straight into the fstab file, making sure there was a space or a tab between each field.

And that would be that. The drives would be mounted when we rebooted. There are two caveats to that. However, they can lead to issues in larger environments where network-based drives are in use. Moving to the right, you see a pair of zero's. The next number to the right tells the system to run a filesystem check or fsck. The root filesystem should be set to 1 and any others you want to be checked assigned after that.

NOTE : These options must be listed in order if the configuration is to work correctly. There are other options for more advanced users that I do not have configured here therefore, there are no examples shown.

However, there are some great resources on the web to explain these options. The ones that I would check out are as follows:. Many casual users do not use this file. However, if you find yourself curious or in need of making changes, you are now better equipped to do so!

Tyler is a community manager at Enable Sysadmin, a submarine veteran, and an all-round tech enthusiast! More about me. Relive our April event with demos, keynotes, and technical sessions from experts, all available on demand.

Enable Sysadmin. Explore the Linux file system table and some configuration basics. Photo by Pixabay from Pexels. Topics: Linux Storage. Tyler Carrigan Tyler is a community manager at Enable Sysadmin, a submarine veteran, and an all-round tech enthusiast! On Demand: Red Hat Summit Virtual Experience Relive our April event with demos, keynotes, and technical sessions from experts, all available on demand.

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