Mount and Umount

MOUNT and UMOUNT

In some distro´s the additional partitions ( Windows or second Linux distro ) are not automatically mounted and thus not visible.

From previous Tip we know about fstab and mtab:

CODE

$ cat /etc/fstab

( shows you the available partitions )

CODE

$ cat /etc/mtab

( shows you the already mounted partitions )

If you see partitions in fstab and the same partitions are not in mtab you will have to mount them yourself:

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$ su
< password >
# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

( If your win. partition is on hda1. Sometimes the mountpoint for Windows is /mnt/win_c )

This will mount hda1, usually your Windows partition.

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# cd /mnt/hda1

( to get in that directory )

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# ls

( to see what is in that directory ) ( ls stands for ¨list¨ )

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# umount /mnt/hda1

( will un-mount the partition, NOTE: not unmount but umount )

In some cases the mount command will print an error message to the screen. ( Mainly in Slackware and Linux From Scratch ) Have a look then if there are any directories in the /mnt directory to mount on:

CODE

$ su
< password >
# cd /mnt
# ls

If there is no ( empty ) directory for hda1 ( or other partitions ) you will have to make it first:

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# mkdir hda1

Only then you can:

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# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

So see first what partitions you would like to mount and make the directories for it in /mnt. Only after that you can do the actual mounting. ( the directories will stay after a reboot, the mounting however has to be done again )
Do not mount partitions if you do not need them mounted. ( since every twenty times a partition is mounted there will be a fsck at boot, and that makes the time to boot longer )

Bruno

-- Jul 3 2003 ( Revised Dec 10 2005 ) --