7. /etc/fstab

Lesson Content

When we want to automatically mount filesystems at startup we can add them to a file called /etc/fstab (pronounced “eff es tab” not “eff stab”) short for filesystem table. This file contains a permanent list of filesystems that are mounted.

pete@icebox:~$ cat /etc/fstab
UUID=130b882f-7d79-436d-a096-1e594c92bb76 /               ext4    relatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
UUID=78d203a0-7c18-49bd-9e07-54f44cdb5726 /home           xfs     relatime        0       2
UUID=22c3d34b-467e-467c-b44d-f03803c2c526 none            swap    sw              0       0

Each line represents one filesystem, the fields are:

• UUID - Device identifier
• Mount point - Directory the filesystem is mounted to
• Filesystem type
• Options - other mount options, see manpage for more details
• Dump - used by the dump utility to decide when to make a backup, you should just default to 0
• Pass - Used by fsck to decide what order filesystems should be checked, if the value is 0, it will not be checked

To add an entry, just directly modify the /etc/fstab file using the entry syntax above. Be careful when modifying this file, you could potentially make your life a little harder if you mess up.

Exercise

Add the USB drive we’ve been working on as an entry in /etc/fstab, when you reboot you should still see it mounted.

Quiz Question