.\" Copyright (c) 1996 Andries Brouwer .\" .\" This page is somewhat derived from a page that was .\" (c) 1980, 1989, 1991 The Regents of the University of California .\" and had been heavily modified by Rik Faith and myself. .\" (Probably no BSD text remains.) .\" Fragments of text were written by Werner Almesberger, Remy Card, .\" Stephen Tweedie and Eric Youngdale. .\" .\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or .\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as .\" published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of .\" the License, or (at your option) any later version. .\" .\" The GNU General Public License's references to "object code" .\" and "executables" are to be interpreted as the output of any .\" document formatting or typesetting system, including .\" intermediate and printed output. .\" .\" This manual is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, .\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of .\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the .\" GNU General Public License for more details. .\" .\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public .\" License along with this manual; if not, write to the Free .\" Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, .\" USA. .\" .\" 960705, aeb: version for mount-2.7g .\" 970114, aeb: xiafs and ext are dead; romfs is new .\" 970623, aeb: -F option .\" 970914, reg: -s option .\" 981111, K.Garloff: /etc/filesystems .\" 990111, aeb: documented /sbin/mount.smbfs .\" .TH MOUNT 8 "14 September 1997" "Linux 2.0" "Linux Programmer's Manual" .SH NAME mount \- mount a file system .SH SYNOPSIS .BI "mount [\-hV]" .LP .BI "mount \-a [\-fFnrsvw] [\-t " vfstype ] .br .BI "mount [\-fnrsvw] [\-o " options " [,...]] " "device " | " dir" .br .BI "mount [\-fnrsvw] [\-t " vfstype "] [\-o " options "] " "device dir" .SH DESCRIPTION All files accessible in a Unix system are arranged in one big tree, the file hierarchy, rooted at .BR / . These files can be spread out over several devices. The .B mount command serves to attach the file system found on some device to the big file tree. Conversely, the .BR umount (8) command will detach it again. The standard form of the .B mount command, is .RS .br .BI "mount \-t" " type device dir" .RE This tells the kernel to attach the file system found on .I device (which is of type .IR type ) at the directory .IR dir . The previous contents (if any) and owner and mode of .I dir become invisible, and as long as this file system remains mounted, the pathname .I dir refers to the root of the file system on .IR device . Three forms of invocation do not actually mount anything: .RS .br .B "mount \-h" .RE prints a help message; .RS .br .B "mount \-V" .RE prints a version string; and just .RS .BI "mount [-t" " type" ] .RE lists all mounted file systems (of type .IR type ) - see below. The .I proc file system is not associated with a special device, and when mounting it, an arbitrary keyword, such as .I proc can be used instead of a device specification. (The customary choice .I none is less fortunate: the error message `none busy' from .B umount can be confusing.) Most devices are indicated by a file name (of a block special device), like .IR /dev/sda1 , but there are other possibilities. For example, in the case of an NFS mount, .I device may look like .IR knuth.cwi.nl:/dir . It is possible to indicate a block special device using its volume label or UUID (see the \-L and \-U options below). The file .I /etc/fstab (see .BR fstab (5)), may contain lines describing what devices are usually mounted where, using which options. This file is used in three ways: .LP (i) The command .RS .br .BI "mount \-a [-t" " type" ] .RE (usually given in a bootscript) causes all file systems mentioned in .I fstab (of the proper type) to be mounted as indicated, except for those whose line contains the .B noauto keyword. Adding the .B \-F option will make mount fork, so that the filesystems are mounted simultaneously. .LP (ii) When mounting a file system mentioned in .IR fstab , it suffices to give only the device, or only the mount point. .LP (iii) Normally, only the superuser can mount file systems. However, when .I fstab contains the .B user option on a line, then anybody can mount the corresponding system. .LP Thus, given a line .RS .br .B "/dev/cdrom /cd iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide" .RE any user can mount the iso9660 file system found on his CDROM using the command .RS .br .B "mount /dev/cdrom" .RE or .RS .br .B "mount /cd" .RE For more details, see .BR fstab (5). Only the user that mounted a filesystem can unmount it again. If any user should be able to unmount, then use .B users instead of .B user in the .I fstab line. The programs .B mount and .B umount maintain a list of currently mounted file systems in the file .IR /etc/mtab . If no arguments are given to .BR mount , this list is printed. When the .I proc filesystem is mounted (say at .IR /proc ), the files .I /etc/mtab and .I /proc/mounts have very similar contents. The former has somewhat more information, such as the mount options used, but is not necessarily up-to-date (cf. the .B \-n option below). It is possible to replace .I /etc/mtab by a symbolic link to .IR /proc/mounts , but some information is lost that way, and in particular working with the loop device will be less convenient. .SH OPTIONS The full set of options used by an invocation of .B mount is determined by first extracting the options for the file system from the .I fstab table, then applying any options specified by the .B \-o argument, and finally applying a .BR \-r " or " \-w option, when present. Options available for the .B mount command: .TP .B \-V Output version. .TP .B \-h Print a help message. .TP .B \-v Verbose mode. .TP .B \-a Mount all filesystems (of the given types) mentioned in .IR fstab . .TP .B \-F (Used in conjunction with .BR \-a .) Fork off a new incarnation of mount for each device. This will do the mounts on different devices or different NFS servers in parallel. This has the advantage that it is faster; also NFS timeouts go in parallel. A disadvantage is that the mounts are done in undefined order. Thus, you cannot use this option if you want to mount both .I /usr and .IR /usr/spool . .TP .B \-f Causes everything to be done except for the actual system call; if it's not obvious, this ``fakes'' mounting the file system. This option is useful in conjunction with the .B \-v flag to determine what the .B mount command is trying to do. It can also be used to add entries for devices that were mounted earlier with the -n option. .TP .B \-n Mount without writing in .IR /etc/mtab . This is necessary for example when .I /etc is on a read-only file system. .TP .B \-s Tolerate sloppy mount options rather than failing. This will ignore mount options not supported by a filesystem type. Not all filesystems support this option. This option exists for support of the Linux autofs\-based automounter. .TP .B \-r Mount the file system read-only. A synonym is .BR "\-o ro" . .TP .B \-w Mount the file system read/write. This is the default. A synonym is .BR "\-o rw" . .TP .BI \-L " label" Mount the partition that has the specified .IR label . .TP .BI \-U " uuid" Mount the partition that has the specified .IR uuid . These two options require the file .I /proc/partitions (present since Linux 2.1.116) to exist. .TP .BI \-t " vfstype" The argument following the .B \-t is used to indicate the file system type. The file system types which are currently supported are listed in .IR linux/fs/filesystems.c : .IR minix , .IR xiafs , .IR ext , .IR ext2 , .IR msdos , .IR umsdos , .IR vfat , .IR proc , .IR autofs , .IR devpts , .IR nfs , .IR iso9660 , .IR smbfs , .IR ncpfs , .IR adfs , .IR affs , .IR coda , .IR hfs , .IR hpfs , .IR ntfs , .IR qnx4 , .IR romfs , .IR ufs , .IR sysv ", " xenix ", " coherent . Note that the last three are equivalent and that .I xenix and .I coherent will be removed at some point in the future \(em use .I sysv instead. Since kernel version 2.1.21 the types .I ext and .I xiafs do not exist anymore. For most types all the .B mount program has to do is issue a simple .IR mount (2) system call, and no detailed knowledge of the filesystem type is required. For a few types however (like nfs, smbfs, ncpfs) ad hoc code is necessary. The nfs ad hoc code is built in, but smbfs and ncpfs have a separate mount program. In order to make it possible to treat all types in a uniform way, mount will execute the program .I /sbin/mount.TYPE (if that exists) when called with type smb or ncp. Since various versions of the .I smbmount program have different calling conventions, .I /sbin/mount.smb may have to be a shell script that sets up the desired call. The type .I iso9660 is the default. If no .B \-t option is given, or if the .B auto type is specified, the superblock is probed for the filesystem type .RI ( minix ", " ext ", " ext2 ", " xiafs ", " iso9660 ", " romfs are supported). If this probe fails, mount will try to read the file .IR /etc/filesystems , or, if that does not exist, .IR /proc/filesystems . All of the filesystem types listed there will be tried, except for those that are labeled "nodev" (e.g., .I proc and .IR nfs ). Note that the .B auto type may be useful for user-mounted floppies. Creating a file .I /etc/filesystems can be useful to change the probe order (e.g., to try vfat before msdos) or if you use a kernel module autoloader. Warning: the probing uses a heuristic (the presence of appropriate `magic'), and could recognize the wrong filesystem type. More than one type may be specified in a comma separated list. The list of file system types can be prefixed with .B no to specify the file system types on which no action should be taken. (This can be meaningful with the .B \-a option.) For example, the command: .RS .RS .B "mount \-a \-t nomsdos,ext" .RE mounts all file systems except those of type .I msdos and .IR ext . .RE .TP .B \-o Options are specified with a .B \-o flag followed by a comma separated string of options. Some of these options are only useful when they appear in the .I /etc/fstab file. The following options apply to any file system that is being mounted: .RS .TP .B async All I/O to the file system should be done asynchronously. .TP .B atime Update inode access time for each access. This is the default. .TP .B auto Can be mounted with the .B \-a option. .TP .B defaults Use default options: .BR rw ", " suid ", " dev ", " exec ", " auto ", " nouser ", and " async. .TP .B dev Interpret character or block special devices on the file system. .TP .B exec Permit execution of binaries. .TP .B noatime Do not update inode access times on this file system (e.g, for faster access on the news spool to speed up news servers). .TP .B noauto Can only be mounted explicitly (i.e., the .B \-a option will not cause the file system to be mounted). .TP .B nodev Do not interpret character or block special devices on the file system. .TP .B noexec Do not allow execution of any binaries on the mounted file system. This option might be useful for a server that has file systems containing binaries for architectures other than its own. .TP .B nosuid Do not allow set-user-identifier or set-group-identifier bits to take effect. (This seems safe, but is in fact rather unsafe if you have suidperl(1) installed.) .TP .B nouser Forbid an ordinary (i.e., non-root) user to mount the file system. This is the default. .TP .B remount Attempt to remount an already-mounted file system. This is commonly used to change the mount flags for a file system, especially to make a readonly file system writeable. .TP .B ro Mount the file system read-only. .TP .B rw Mount the file system read-write. .TP .B suid Allow set-user-identifier or set-group-identifier bits to take effect. .TP .B sync All I/O to the file system should be done synchronously. .TP .B user Allow an ordinary user to mount the file system. This option implies the options .BR noexec ", " nosuid ", and " nodev (unless overridden by subsequent options, as in the option line .BR user,exec,dev,suid ). .RE .SH "FILESYSTEM SPECIFIC MOUNT OPTIONS" The following options apply only to certain file systems. We sort them by file system. They all follow the .B \-o flag. .SH "Mount options for affs" .TP \fBuid=\fP\fIvalue\fP and \fBgid=\fP\fIvalue\fP Set the owner and group of the root of the file system (default: uid=gid=0, but with option .B uid or .B gid without specified value, the uid and gid of the current process are taken). .TP \fBsetuid=\fP\fIvalue\fP and \fBsetgid=\fP\fIvalue\fP Set the owner and group of all files. .TP .BI mode= value Set the mode of all files to .IR value " & 0777" disregarding the original permissions. Add search permission to directories that have read permission. The value is given in octal. .TP .B protect Do not allow any changes to the protection bits on the file system. .TP .B usemp Set uid and gid of the root of the file system to the uid and gid of the mount point upon the first sync or umount, and then clear this option. Strange... .TP .B verbose Print an informational message for each successful mount. .TP .BI prefix= string Prefix used before volume name, when following a link. .TP .BI volume= string Prefix (of length at most 30) used before '/' when following a symbolic link. .TP .BI reserved= value (Default: 2.) Number of unused blocks at the start of the device. .TP .BI root= value Give explicitly the location of the root block. .TP .BI bs= value Give blocksize. Allowed values are 512, 1024, 2048, 4096. .TP .BR grpquota " / " noquota " / " quota " / " usrquota These options are accepted but ignored. .SH "Mount options for coherent" None. .SH "Mount options for ext" None. Note that the `ext' file system is obsolete. Don't use it. Since Linux version 2.1.21 extfs is no longer part of the kernel source. .SH "Mount options for ext2" The `ext2' file system is the standard Linux file system. Due to a kernel bug, it may be mounted with random mount options (fixed in Linux 2.0.4). .TP .BR bsddf " / " minixdf Set the behaviour for the .I statfs system call. The .B minixdf behaviour is to return in the .I f_blocks field the total number of blocks of the file system, while the .B bsddf behaviour (which is the default) is to subtract the overhead blocks used by the ext2 file system and not available for file storage. Thus .RE .nf % mount /k -o minixdf; df /k; umount /k Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on /dev/sda6 2630655 86954 2412169 3% /k % mount /k -o bsddf; df /k; umount /k Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on /dev/sda6 2543714 13 2412169 0% /k .fi (Note that this example shows that one can add command line options to the options given in .IR /etc/fstab .) .TP .BR check " / " check=normal " / " check=strict Set checking level. When at least one of these options is set (and .B check=normal is set by default) the inodes and blocks bitmaps are checked upon mount (which can take half a minute or so on a big disk). With strict checking, block deallocation checks that the block to free is in the data zone. .TP .BR check=none " / " nocheck No checking is done. .TP .B debug Print debugging info upon each (re)mount. .TP .BR errors=continue " / " errors=remount-ro " / " errors=panic Define the behaviour when an error is encountered. (Either ignore errors and just mark the file system erroneous and continue, or remount the file system read-only, or panic and halt the system.) The default is set in the filesystem superblock, and can be changed using .BR tune2fs (8). .TP .BR grpid " or " bsdgroups " / " nogrpid " or " sysvgroups These options define what group id a newly created file gets. When .BR grpid is set, it takes the group id of the directory in which it is created; otherwise (the default) it takes the fsgid of the current process, unless the directory has the setgid bit set, in which case it takes the gid from the parent directory, and also gets the setgid bit set if it is a directory itself. .TP \fBresgid=\fP\fIn\fP and \fBresuid=\fP\fIn\fP The ext2 file system reserves a certain percentage of the available space (by default 5%, see .BR mke2fs (8) and .BR tune2fs (8)). These options determine who can use the reserved blocks. (Roughly: whoever has the specified uid, or belongs to the specified group.) .TP .BI sb= n Instead of block 1, use block .I n as superblock. This could be useful when the filesystem has been damaged. Usually, copies of the superblock are found every 8192 blocks: in block 1, 8193, 16385, ... (Thus, one gets hundreds or even thousands of copies of the superblock on a big filesystem. I do not know of options to mke2fs that would cause fewer copies to be written.) .TP .BR grpquota " / " noquota " / " quota " / " usrquota These options are accepted but ignored. .SH "Mount options for fat" (Note: .I fat is not a separate filesystem, but a common part of the .IR msdos , .I umsdos and .I vfat filesystems.) .TP .BR blocksize=512 " / " blocksize=1024 Set blocksize (default 512). .TP \fBuid=\fP\fIvalue\fP and \fBgid=\fP\fIvalue\fP Set the owner and group of all files. (Default: the uid and gid of the current process.) .TP .BI umask= value Set the umask (the bitmask of the permissions that are .B not present). The default is the umask of the current process. The value is given in octal. .TP .BI check= value Three different levels of pickyness can be chosen: .RS .TP .B r[elaxed] Upper and lower case are accepted and equivalent, long name parts are truncated (e.g. .I verylongname.foobar becomes .IR verylong.foo ), leading and embedded spaces are accepted in each name part (name and extension). .TP .B n[ormal] Like "relaxed", but many special characters (*, ?, <, spaces, etc.) are rejected. This is the default. .TP .B s[trict] Like "normal", but names may not contain long parts and special characters that are sometimes used on Linux, but are not accepted by MS-DOS are rejected. (+, =, spaces, etc.) .RE .TP .BR conv=b[inary] " / " conv=t[ext] " / " conv=a[uto] The .I fat file system can perform CRLF<-->NL (MS-DOS text format to UNIX text format) conversion in the kernel. The following conversion modes are available: .RS .TP .B binary no translation is performed. This is the default. .TP .B text CRLF<-->NL translation is performed on all files. .TP .B auto CRLF<-->NL translation is performed on all files that don't have a "well-known binary" extension. The list of known extensions can be found at the beginning of .I fs/fat/misc.c (as of 2.0, the list is: exe, com, bin, app, sys, drv, ovl, ovr, obj, lib, dll, pif, arc, zip, lha, lzh, zoo, tar, z, arj, tz, taz, tzp, tpz, gz, tgz, deb, gif, bmp, tif, gl, jpg, pcx, tfm, vf, gf, pk, pxl, dvi). .PP Programs that do computed lseeks won't like in-kernel text conversion. Several people have had their data ruined by this translation. Beware! For file systems mounted in binary mode, a conversion tool (fromdos/todos) is available. .RE .TP .B debug Turn on the .I debug flag. A version string and a list of file system parameters will be printed (these data are also printed if the parameters appear to be inconsistent). .TP .BR fat=12 " / " fat=16 Specify either a 12 bit fat or a 16 bit fat. This overrides the automatic FAT type detection routine. Use with caution! .TP .B quiet Turn on the .I quiet flag. Attempts to chown or chmod files do not return errors, although they fail. Use with caution! .TP .B "sys_immutable, showexec, dots, nodots, dotsOK=[yes|no]" Various misguided attempts to force Unix or DOS conventions onto a FAT file system. .SH "Mount options for hpfs" .TP \fBuid=\fP\fIvalue\fP and \fBgid=\fP\fIvalue\fP Set the owner and group of all files. (Default: the uid and gid of the current process.) .TP .BI umask= value Set the umask (the bitmask of the permissions that are .B not present). The default is the umask of the current process. The value is given in octal. .TP .BR case=lower " / " case=asis Convert all files names to lower case, or leave them. (Default: .BR case=lower .) .TP .BR conv=binary " / " conv=text " / " conv=auto For .BR conv=text , delete some random CRs (in particular, all followed by NL) when reading a file. For .BR conv=auto , choose more or less at random between .BR conv=binary " and " conv=text . For .BR conv=binary , just read what is in the file. This is the default. .TP .B nocheck Do not abort mounting when certain consistency checks fail. .SH "Mount options for iso9660" Normal .I iso9660 filenames appear in a 8.3 format (i.e., DOS-like restrictions on filename length), and in addition all characters are in upper case. Also there is no field for file ownership, protection, number of links, provision for block/character devices, etc. Rock Ridge is an extension to iso9660 that provides all of these unix like features. Basically there are extensions to each directory record that supply all of the additional information, and when Rock Ridge is in use, the filesystem is indistinguishable from a normal UNIX file system (except that it is read-only, of course). .TP .B norock Disable the use of Rock Ridge extensions, even if available. Cf.\& .BR map . .TP .BR check=r[elaxed] " / " check=s[trict] With .BR check=relaxed , a filename is first converted to lower case before doing the lookup. This is probably only meaningful together with .B norock and .BR map=normal . (Default: .BR check=strict .) .TP \fBuid=\fP\fIvalue\fP and \fBgid=\fP\fIvalue\fP Give all files in the file system the indicated user or group id, possibly overriding the information found in the Rock Ridge extensions. (Default: .BR uid=0,gid=0 .) .TP .BR map=n[ormal] " / " map=o[ff] For non-Rock Ridge volumes, normal name translation maps upper to lower case ASCII, drops a trailing `;1', and converts `;' to `.'. With .B map=off no name translation is done. See .BR norock . (Default: .BR map=normal .) .TP .BI mode= value For non-Rock Ridge volumes, give all files the indicated mode. (Default: read permission for everybody.) Since Linux 2.1.37 one no longer needs to specify the mode in decimal. (Octal is indicated by a leading 0.) .TP .B unhide Also show hidden and associated files. .TP .B block=[512|1024|2048] Set the block size to the indicated value. (Default: .BR block=1024 .) .TP .BR conv=a[uto] " / " conv=b[inary] " / " conv=m[text] " / " conv=t[ext] (Default: .BR conv=binary .) Since Linux 1.3.54 this option has no effect anymore. (And non-binary settings used to be very dangerous, often leading to silent data corruption.) .TP .B cruft If the high byte of the file length contains other garbage, set this mount option to ignore the high order bits of the file length. This implies that a file cannot be larger than 16MB. The `cruft' option is set automatically if the entire CDROM has a weird size (negative, or more than 800MB). It is also set when volume sequence numbers other than 0 or 1 are seen. .SH "Mount options for minix" None. .SH "Mount options for msdos" See mount options for fat. If the .I msdos file system detects an inconsistency, it reports an error and sets the file system read-only. The file system can be made writeable again by remounting it. .SH "Mount options for ncp" Just like .IR nfs ", the " ncp implementation expects a binary argument (a .IR "struct ncp_mount_data" ) to the mount system call. This argument is constructed by .BR ncpmount (8) and the current version of .B mount (2.6h) does not know anything about ncp. .SH "Mount options for nfs" Instead of a textual option string, parsed by the kernel, the .I nfs file system expects a binary argument of type .IR "struct nfs_mount_data" . The program .B mount itself parses the following options of the form `tag=value', and puts them in the structure mentioned: .BI rsize= n, .BI wsize= n, .BI timeo= n, .BI retrans= n, .BI acregmin= n, .BI acregmax= n, .BI acdirmin= n, .BI acdirmax= n, .BI actimeo= n, .BI retry= n, .BI port= n, .BI mountport= n, .BI mounthost= name, .BI mountprog= n, .BI mountvers= n, .BI nfsprog= n, .BI nfsvers= n, .BI namlen= n. The option .BI addr= n is accepted but ignored. Also the following Boolean options, possibly preceded by .B no are recognized: .BR bg , .BR fg , .BR soft , .BR hard , .BR intr , .BR posix , .BR cto , .BR ac , .BR tcp , .BR udp , .BR lock . For details, see .BR nfs (5). Especially useful options include .TP .B rsize=8192,wsize=8192 This will make your nfs connection much faster than with the default buffer size of 1024. .TP .B hard The program accessing a file on a NFS mounted file system will hang when the server crashes. The process cannot be interrupted or killed unless you also specify .BR intr . When the NFS server is back online the program will continue undisturbed from where it was. This is probably what you want. .TP .B soft This option allows the kernel to time out if the nfs server is not responding for some time. The time can be specified with .BR timeo=time . This option might be useful if your nfs server sometimes doesn't respond or will be rebooted while some process tries to get a file from the server. Usually it just causes lots of trouble. .TP .B nolock Do not use locking. Do not start lockd. .SH "Mount options for proc" .TP \fBuid=\fP\fIvalue\fP and \fBgid=\fP\fIvalue\fP These options are recognized, but have no effect as far as I can see. .SH "Mount options for romfs" None. .SH "Mount options for smbfs" Just like .IR nfs ", the " smb implementation expects a binary argument (a .IR "struct smb_mount_data" ) to the mount system call. This argument is constructed by .BR smbmount (8) and the current version of .B mount (2.6c) does not know anything about smb. .SH "Mount options for sysv" None. .SH "Mount options for ufs" None. .SH "Mount options for umsdos" See mount options for msdos. The .B dotsOK option is explicitly killed by .IR umsdos . .SH "Mount options for vfat" First of all, the mount options for .I fat are recognized. The .B dotsOK option is explicitly killed by .IR vfat . Furthermore, there are .TP .B uni_xlate Translate unhandled Unicode characters to special escaped sequences. This lets you backup and restore filenames that are created with any Unicode characters. Without this option, a '?' is used when no translation is possible. The escape character is ':' because it is otherwise illegal on the vfat filesystem. The escape sequence that gets used, where u is the unicode character, is: ':', (u & 0x3f), ((u>>6) & 0x3f), (u>>12). .TP .B posix Allow two files with names that only differ in case. .TP .B nonumtail First try to make a short name without sequence number, before trying .IR name~num.ext . .SH "Mount options for xenix" None. .SH "Mount options for xiafs" None. Although nothing is wrong with xiafs, it is not used much, and is not maintained. Probably one shouldn't use it. Since Linux version 2.1.21 xiafs is no longer part of the kernel source. .SH "THE LOOP DEVICE" One further possible type is a mount via the loop device. For example, the command .nf .B " mount /tmp/fdimage /mnt -t msdos -o loop=/dev/loop3,blocksize=1024" .fi will set up the loop device .I /dev/loop3 to correspond to the file .IR /tmp/fdimage , and then mount this device on .IR /mnt . This type of mount knows about three options, namely .BR loop ", " offset " and " encryption , that are really options to .BR losetup (8). If no explicit loop device is mentioned (but just an option `\fB\-o loop\fP' is given), then .B mount will try to find some unused loop device and use that. If you are not so unwise as to make .I /etc/mtab a symbolic link to .I /proc/mounts then any loop device allocated by .B mount will be freed by .BR umount . You can also free a loop device by hand, using `losetup -d', see .BR losetup (8). .SH FILES .I /etc/fstab file system table .br .I /etc/mtab table of mounted file systems .br .I /etc/mtab~ lock file .br .I /etc/mtab.tmp temporary file .SH "SEE ALSO" .BR mount (2), .BR umount (2), .BR fstab (5), .BR umount (8), .BR swapon (8), .BR nfs (5), .BR mountd (8), .BR nfsd (8), .BR mke2fs (8), .BR tune2fs (8), .BR losetup (8) .SH BUGS It is possible for a corrupted file system to cause a crash. .PP Some Linux file systems don't support .B "\-o sync" (the ext2fs .I does support synchronous updates (a la BSD) when mounted with the .B sync option). .PP The .B "\-o remount" may not be able to change mount parameters (all .IR ext2fs -specific parameters, except .BR sb , are changeable with a remount, for example, but you can't change .B gid or .B umask for the .IR fatfs ). .SH HISTORY A .B mount command existed in Version 5 AT&T UNIX.