ext2, minix, msdos,
vfat ,iso9660) can be combined to form
a large overall file system under /.
Since Linux does not have logical drives such as e.g. in DOS (C:, D:, etc.),
this mechanism is necessary. The Linux system regards all physical drives,
including hard disks, floppy drives, CD-ROM drives, MO, ZIP drives, etc. as
file systems that are integrated in the parent file system /.
This procedure is called mounting. The act of detaching a
file system from the / file system is referred to as unmounting.
Prerequisites for including and mounting file systems:
mount.
/" file system. This point is called mountpoint and
is usually an empty directory that needs to be created with mkdir.
mount or entered in the file /etc/fstab.
File systems that are regularly mounted (e.g. when the system is booted) are listed
in the file /etc/fstab, each line representing one file system. For more information
on this issue, please check the respective manpages:
man fstab
man mount
Accordingly, an entry for an ATAPI CD-ROM drive (master on the second controller) could look as follows:
/dev/hdc /cdrom iso9660 ro,noauto,user 0 0
This allows all users to mount CDs by entering "mount /cdrom".
/etc/fstab should correspond to the
subsequent mounting sequence.
The correct sequence is usually determined by YaST; for example,
/usr/local is mounted after /usr. The command mount
can not determine the correct sequence and mounts file systems in the order of their
appearance in /etc/fstab.
The options user and noauto are interesting for the
use of mount and /etc/fstab:
user allows a file system to be mounted/unmounted by any user (this is
especially interesting for the CD-ROM drive).
noauto prevents the indicated partition from being mounted automatically
at system start-up (i.e. mount -a), and requires an explicit manual
mount. This is useful for media that may not always be available at system start-up
(e.g. CD-ROM).