Training courses

Kernel and Embedded Linux

Bootlin training courses

Embedded Linux, kernel,
Yocto Project, Buildroot, real-time,
graphics, boot time, debugging...

Bootlin logo

Elixir Cross Referencer

.\"	$NetBSD: fstab.5,v 1.44.2.1 2020/02/12 19:44:27 martin Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1989, 1991, 1993
.\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
.\"    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
.\"    without specific prior written permission.
.\"
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
.\" ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
.\"
.\"     @(#)fstab.5	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/5/93
.\"
.Dd September 15, 2019
.Dt FSTAB 5
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm fstab
.Nd file system table for devices, types, and mount points
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In fstab.h
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The file
.Nm
contains descriptive information about the various file systems.
.Nm
is only read by programs, and not written;
it is the duty of the system administrator to properly create
and maintain this file.
Each file system is described on a separate line;
fields on each line are separated by tabs or spaces.
Lines beginning
with
.Dq #
are comments.
The order of records in
.Nm
is important because
.Xr fsck 8 ,
.Xr mount 8 ,
and
.Xr umount 8
sequentially iterate through
.Nm
doing their respective tasks.
.Pp
Each configuration line/record in
.Nm
has the format:
.Dl fs_spec fs_file fs_vfstype fs_mntops fs_freq fs_passno
.Pp
The first field,
.Pq Fa fs_spec ,
describes the block special device or
remote file system to be mounted.
For file systems of type
.Em ffs ,
the special file name is the block special file name,
and not the character special file name.
If a program needs the character special file name,
the program must create it by appending a
.Dq r
after the
last
.Dq /
in the special file name.
.Pp
If the first field is of the form
.Dq NAME=<value>
then all the
.Xr dk 4
wedge partitions are searched for one that has a wedge name equal to
.Ar <value>
and the device corresponding to it is selected.
.Pp
If the first field starts with the prefix
.Dq ROOT.
the prefix is replaced with
.Dq /dev/[root_device] ,
where
.Bq root_device
is the value of the
.Dq kern.root_device
sysctl.
.Pp
The second field,
.Pq Fa fs_file ,
describes the mount point for the file system.
For swap and dump partitions, this field should be specified as
.Dq none .
.Pp
The third field,
.Pq Fa fs_vfstype ,
describes the type of the file system.
The system currently supports these file systems:
.Bl -tag -width filecore -offset indent
.It Em adosfs
an
.Tn AmigaDOS
file system.
.It Em cd9660
an
.Tn ISO
9660 CD-ROM file system.
.It Em ext2fs
an implementation of the Linux
.Dq Second Extended File-system .
.It Em fdesc
an implementation of
.Pa /dev/fd .
.It Em ffs
a local
.Ux
file system.
.It Em filecore
a file system for
.Tn RISC\ OS .
.It Em kernfs
various and sundry kernel statistics.
.It Em lfs
a log-structured file-system.
.It Em mfs
a local memory-based
.Ux
file system.
.It Em msdos
an
.Tn MS-DOS
.Dq FAT file system .
.It Em nfs
a Sun Microsystems compatible
.Dq Network File System .
.It Em ntfs
a file system used by
.Tn Windows NT .
Still experimental.
.It Em null
a loop-back file system, allowing parts of the system to be viewed
elsewhere.
.It Em overlay
a demonstration of layered file systems.
.It Em portal
a general file system interface, currently supports TCP and FS mounts.
.It Em procfs
a local file system of process information.
.It Em ptyfs
a pseudo-terminal device file system.
.It Em smbfs
a shared resource from an SMB/CIFS file server.
.It Em swap
a disk partition to be used for swapping and paging.
.It Em tmpfs
an efficient memory file system.
.It Em umap
a user and group re-mapping file system.
.It Em union
a translucent file system.
.It Em zfs
a ZFS file system.
.El
.Pp
The fourth field,
.Pq Fa fs_mntops ,
describes the mount options associated with the file system.
It is formatted as a comma separated list of options.
It contains at least the type of mount (see
.Fa fs_type
below) plus any additional options
appropriate to the file system type.
.Pp
The option
.Dq auto
can be used in the
.Dq noauto
form to cause
a file system not to be mounted automatically (with
.Dq mount -a
,
or system boot time).
.Pp
If the options
.Dq userquota
and/or
.Dq groupquota
are specified,
the file system is automatically processed by the
.Xr quotacheck 8
command, and legacy user and/or group disk quotas are enabled with
.Xr quotaon 8 .
By default,
file system quotas are maintained in files named
.Pa quota.user
and
.Pa quota.group
which are located at the root of the associated file system.
These defaults may be overridden by putting an equal sign
and an alternative absolute pathname following the quota option.
Thus, if the user quota file for
.Pa /tmp
is stored in
.Pa /var/quotas/tmp.user ,
this location can be specified as:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
userquota=/var/quotas/tmp.user
.Ed
.Pp
It is recommended to turn on the new, in-file system quota with
.Xr tunefs 8
or at
.Xr newfs 8
time, and to not use the
.Dq userquota
or
.Dq groupquota
options.
Migration of limits to the new in-file system quota can be handled
via
.Xr quotadump 8
and
.Xr quotarestore 8 .
.Pp
The option
.Dq rump
is used to mount the file system using a
.Xr rump 3
userspace server instead of the kernel server.
.Pp
The type of the mount is extracted from the
.Fa fs_mntops
field and stored separately in the
.Fa fs_type
field (it is not deleted from the
.Fa fs_mntops
field).
If
.Fa fs_type
is
.Dq rw
or
.Dq ro
then the file system whose name is given in the
.Fa fs_file
field is normally mounted read-write or read-only on the
specified special file.
If
.Fa fs_type
is
.Dq sw
or
.Dq dp
then the special file is made available as a piece of swap
or dump
space by the
.Xr swapctl 8
command towards the beginning of the system reboot procedure.
See
.Xr swapctl 8
for more information on configuring swap and dump devices.
The fields other than
.Fa fs_spec
and
.Fa fs_type
are unused.
If
.Fa fs_type
is specified as
.Dq xx
the entry is ignored.
This is useful to show disk partitions which are currently unused.
.Pp
The fifth field,
.Pq Fa fs_freq ,
is used for these file systems by the
.Xr dump 8
command to determine which file systems need to be dumped.
If the fifth field is not present, a value of zero is returned and
.Xr dump 8
will assume that the file system does not need to be dumped.
.Pp
The sixth field,
.Pq Fa fs_passno ,
is used by the
.Xr fsck 8
program to determine the order in which file system checks are done
at reboot time.
The root file system should be specified with a
.Fa fs_passno
of 1, and other file systems should have a
.Fa fs_passno
of 2.
Filesystems within a drive will be checked sequentially,
but file systems on different drives will be checked at the
same time to use parallelism available in the hardware.
If the sixth field is not present or zero,
a value of zero is returned and
.Xr fsck 8
will assume that the file system does not need to be checked.
.Bd -literal
#define	FSTAB_RW	"rw"	/* read-write device */
#define	FSTAB_RQ	"rq"	/* read/write with quotas */
#define	FSTAB_RO	"ro"	/* read-only device */
#define	FSTAB_SW	"sw"	/* swap device */
#define	FSTAB_DP	"dp"	/* dump device */
#define	FSTAB_XX	"xx"	/* ignore totally */

struct fstab {
	char	*fs_spec;	/* block special device name */
	char	*fs_file;	/* file system path prefix */
	char	*fs_vfstype;	/* type of file system */
	char	*fs_mntops;	/* comma separated mount options */
	char	*fs_type;	/* rw, ro, sw, or xx */
	int	fs_freq;	/* dump frequency, in days */
	int	fs_passno;	/* pass number on parallel fsck */
};
.Ed
.Pp
The proper way to read records from
.Pa fstab
is to use the routines
.Xr getfsent 3 ,
.Xr getfsspec 3 ,
and
.Xr getfsfile 3 .
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /etc/fstab
.It Pa /etc/fstab
The location of
.Nm
configuration file.
.It Pa /usr/share/examples/fstab/
Some useful configuration examples.
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
To use
.Dq NAME
on a non-GPT disk, use:
.Bd -literal
NAME=sb2k5Root/a        /       ffs     rw,log           1 1
NAME=sb2k5Root/b        none    swap    sw,dp            0 0
.Ed
.Pp
For a
.Xr gpt 8
disk, use:
.Bd -literal
NAME=firstpartition     /       ffs     rw,log           1 1
NAME=secondpartition    none    swap    sw,dp            0 0
.Ed
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr getfsent 3 ,
.Xr getfsspecname 3 ,
.Xr mount 8 ,
.Xr swapctl 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
file format appeared in
.Bx 4.0 .