Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Name

mount

Synopsis

    mount [options] [[device] directory]

System administration command. Mount a filesystem. The filesystem on device is mounted on directory. If no device is specified, mount looks for an entry in /etc/fstab to find what device is associated with the given directory. The directory, which must already exist and should be empty, becomes the name of the root of the newly mounted filesystem. If mount is invoked with no arguments, it displays the name of each mounted device, the directory on which it is mounted, its filesystem type, and any mount options associated with the device. See also umount.

Note: despite the references in the Mac OS X mount(8) manpage to /etc/fstab, that file is not used. On Mac OS X 10.4, the file /etc/fstab.hd (note the slightly different name) has these contents:

    $ cat /etc/fstab.hd
    IGNORE THIS FILE.
    This file does nothing, contains no useful data, and might go away in future releases.
 Do not depend on this file or its contents.

Options

-a

Mount all filesystems that are available for mounting. Use -t to limit this to all filesystems of a particular type. Filesystems marked noauto are not mounted.

-d

Debugging; does everything but actually make the system call. Useful with -v.

-f

Force removal of write status; used for changing a mount from read-write to read-only.

-o option

Qualify the mount with a mount option. Filesystem specific options may be passed as a comma-separated list in the argument to -o, and different filesystems may have additional ...