NAME

mount, umount − mount and dismount file system

SYNOPSIS

/etc/mount [ special name [ −r ] ]

/etc/mount −a

/etc/umount special

/etc/umount −a

DESCRIPTION

Mount announces to the system that a removable file system is present on the device special.  The file name must exist already; it must be a directory (unless the root of the mounted file system is not a directory).  It becomes the name of the newly mounted root.  The optional argument −r indicates that the file system is to be mounted read-only. 

Umount announces to the system that the removable file system previously mounted on device special is to be removed. 

If the −a option is present for either mount or umount, all of the file systems described in /etc/fstab are attempted to be mounted or unmounted.  In this case, special and name are taken from /etc/fstab.  The special file name from /etc/fstab is the block special name. 

These commands maintain a table of mounted devices in /etc/mtab.  If invoked without an argument, mount prints the table. 

Physically write-protected and magnetic tape file systems must be mounted read-only or errors will occur when access times are updated, whether or not any explicit write is attempted. 

FILES

/etc/mtabmount table
/etc/fstabfile system table

SEE ALSO

mount(2), mtab(5), fstab(5)

BUGS

Mounting file systems full of garbage will crash the system. 
Mounting a root directory on a non-directory makes some apparently good pathnames invalid.

th Berkeley Distribution