mountpoint: For a disk (or partition (portion) of a disk) to be usable in Linux, it must be "mounted? ". Mounting a disk establishes its location in the file and directory hierarchy, in other words, it establishes its path, like /, /usr, /home, /home/user01/temp.

Aside: Not all mountpoints require that a disk be mounted there -- if a disk is not mounted at a potential mountpoint, the storage space for that mountpoint will be located on the disk or partition at a higher mount point in the same hierarchy. <reword this, change mountpoint to something else> Example: If the only mount point "mounted" to a partition is /, all directories and files "below" / (/usr, /home, /home/user01, etc.) will be stored on the partition mounted as root.

Example: If you have a partition of a disk /dev/hda1 and you want to use it as /home/user01/temp, you first create the mountpoint /home/user01/temp using:

mkdir /home/user01/temp (Assuming /home/user01 exists.)

You then mount the partition to that mountpoint using mount, something like:

mount <options> /dev/hda1 /home/user01/temp

You can either do these operations (as root, only?), or have them done automatically during startup of the system. To have it done automatically during startup of the system, you must add a mount line to the /etc/fstab file. (The mount command in /etc/fstab might be slightly different than one issued from the command line??)

See AboutThesePages.

Contributors

• RandyKramer - 15 Jan 2002
• <If you edit this page, add your name here, move this to the next line>