Linux Pocket Guide

Name

mount [options] device | directory — mount

Synopsis

/bin stdin stdout - file -- opt --help --version

The mount command makes a hardware storage device accessible. Most commonly it handles disk devices (say, /dev/hda1), making them accessible via an existing directory (say, /mnt/mydir):

# mkdir /mnt/mydir
# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/mydir
# df /mnt/mydir
Filesystem     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1        1011928  285744    674780  30% /mnt/mydir

mount has tons of options and uses; we will discuss only the most basic.

In most common cases, mount reads the file /etc/fstab (filesystem table) to learn how to mount a desired disk. For example, if you type mount /usr, the mount command looks up the “/usr” line in /etc/fstab, which might look like this:

/dev/hda8    /usr    ext3    defaults    1    2

Here mount learns, among other things, that disk device /dev/hda8 should be mounted on /usr as a Linux ext3-formatted filesystem.^[13]

mount is run typically by the superuser, but common devices like floppy and CD-ROM drives often can be mounted and unmounted by any user.

$ mount /mnt/cdrom
$ mount /mnt/floppy

^[13] Alternatively, you can use the -t option of mount to specify the filesystem type directly, such as mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /mnt/mydir. See man mount.