Has fstab gone redundant??

RajivNair · 2006-10-03 04:26:21

Hello everyone,
Has fstab been replaced by mtab,coz it seems tht all the mtab entries are catered to before the fstab entries,its resulting in my root partition to be mounted twice,its showing another partition with 37.0gb size and when i click on it ,its saying

Unable to mount the selected volume.
mount: according to mtab, /dev/hda3 is already mounted on /

mount failed

Can i comment out the root entry in fstab to set things right or am i gonna mess it up??

Thanks in advance,
Rajiv Nair

ralvez · 2006-10-03 06:41:44

I do not thinkk so, since they seem to have a complementary function rather than being substitute for one another.
Take a look here:
http://www.brunolinux.com/02-The_Termin … _Mtab.html

noriko · 2006-10-03 07:54:07

yes, what rajiv said is abs correct along with the link...

fstab, is where u manually map partition and their mount points,
after the partitions are mounted they are mapped in mtab.. applications then use mtab to verify what partitions are available for use and how/where their access points are ...

Cerebral · 2006-10-03 11:17:18

Did you manually edit /etc/mtab? This file is automatically generated and tracks which partitions you have mounted, and where - you should _not_ edit it by hand, otherwise you'll get problems like the one you just described.

noriko · 2006-10-03 12:37:31

add:to what cer~ said...

Can i comment out the root entry in fstab to set things right or am i gonna mess it up??

no, a partition must exist afaik, for '/' .. if there are duplicate entries, i recommend removing the incorrect one/s ...
as cer~ said, if u manually edit/delete mtab, u will be unable to mount/unmount partitions that were listed in it, the only solution i know of is to reboot... and even this might not be very safe...

RajivNair · 2006-10-03 16:49:57

hello everyone,
this is my fstab file:-

#
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hdd /mnt/cd iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd udf ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/fl vfat user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hda3 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/hda1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/hda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc3 /media/hdc3 ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/hdc5 /media/hdc5 ext3 defaults 0 1

and this is my mtab file:-

/dev/hda3 / ext3 rw 0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
none /sys sysfs rw 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
/dev/hda1 /boot ext2 rw 0 0
/dev/hdc3 /media/hdc3 ext3 rw 0 0
/dev/hdc5 /media/hdc5 ext3 rw 0 0

from this i still cant figure out the redundant entry and im still getting that duplicate mounts for "/" ,i had the same problem with "hdc3" and "hdc5" but that got corrected by changing the mount points from /mnt/*** to /media/***.
and also i havent manually edited "mtab" , i have only edited "fstab".
thanks y'all,
rajiv nair

projektdotnet · 2006-10-06 05:11:18

there is no duplicate. fstab is where you tell it to mount and mtab shows where everything is currently mounted. Looks fine if your Filesystem isn't buggin out I wouldn't worry about it

Arch Linux

#1 2006-10-03 04:26:21

Has fstab gone redundant??

#2 2006-10-03 06:41:44

Re: Has fstab gone redundant??

#3 2006-10-03 07:54:07

Re: Has fstab gone redundant??

#4 2006-10-03 11:17:18

Re: Has fstab gone redundant??

#5 2006-10-03 12:37:31

Re: Has fstab gone redundant??

#6 2006-10-03 16:49:57

Re: Has fstab gone redundant??

#7 2006-10-06 05:11:18

Re: Has fstab gone redundant??

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