Arch Linux

drtebi

Member

Registered: 2013-02-09

Posts: 148

[SOLVED] Quick fstab question

Just wondering about something...

The last time I re-installed my Arch Linux system, I did not use genfstab or wrote fstab by hand. As a matter of fact, fstab was just an empty file. Yet my system booted just fine.

So my question is, how did Linux know how to mount my system? I assume it does this according to the boot script?

Is it advisable to have an entry in fstab even though it appears to work fine without one?

For your information, this is a PC with a single SSD, using the entire disk to install Linux (e.g. no separate partitions).

Last edited by drtebi (2017-05-31 19:26:49)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,071

Re: [SOLVED] Quick fstab question

Systemd has some heuristics on GPT disks to automatically mount the correct partitions (given that you use systemd-boot at the same time)  so if that autodetection works correctly you can indeed run without an fstab, see [1] for more info

[1] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/sy … rator.html

Last edited by V1del (2017-05-31 19:21:49)

drtebi

Member

Registered: 2013-02-09

Posts: 148

Re: [SOLVED] Quick fstab question

Great, thanks. That's all I wanted to know