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fstab

The fstab (file system table) file (/etc/fstab) is a configuration file that defines how and where the main filesystems are to be mounted, especially at boot time.

Syntax

Each line of /etc/fstab contains the necessary settings to mount one partition, drive or network share. The line has six columns, separated by whitespaces or tabs. The columns are as follows:

  1. The device file, UUID or label or other means of locating the partition or data source.
  2. The mount point, where the data is to be attached to the filesystem.
  3. The filesystem type. See man 5 fstab for more supported file system types.
  4. Options, including if the filesystem should be mounted at boot.
  5. Adjusts the archiving schedule for the partition (used by app-arch/dump package). 0 disables, 1 enables the feature.
  6. Controls the order in which fsck checks the device/partition for errors at boot time. The root device should be 1. Other partitions should be either 2 (to check after root) or 0 (to disable checking for that partition altogether).
/dev/nvme0n1p3          /boot           vfat    defaults,noatime        0 2
/dev/nvme0n1p4          none            swap    sw                      0 0
/dev/nvme0n1p5          /               ext4    noatime                 0 1

Mount Options

  • defaults
    • Use the default mount options: rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, async.
  • rw
    • Mount the filesystem read-write.
  • suid
    • Follow SUID and SGID bits.
  • exec
    • Allow execution of binaries.
  • auto
    • Mount the filesystem automatically on boot.
  • noatime
    • Never update inode access times for best I/O performance.
  • sw
    • Mount a swap partition.

Reference