How to edit fstab

Fstab is a file for storing mount points and settings for hard drives, cd DVD, floppy and other block devices

Configuration File=
 * /etc/fstab

=Format= Each line is the configuration for each device. On one line there is 6 fields
 * device
 * Ex: /dev/hdc1
 * Mount point
 * Ex: /mnt/otherDrive
 * Filesystem
 * ext3
 * Options
 * Ex: defaults
 * Dump
 * Ex: 0
 * fsck
 * Ex: 1


 * [device] [mount point] [filesystem] [mount options] [dump] [fsck]

Device
The block device you want to mount

Common devices
 * CDROM: /dev/cdrom
 * Primary IDE harddrive, partition 1: /dev/hda1
 * Secondary IDE harddrive, partition 4: /dev/hdb4
 * Primary SCSI harddrive, partition 1: /dev/sda1
 * floppy disk: /dev/fd0

Mount Point
This is entirely decided by you.
 * Needed
 * Root: /
 * Optional
 * /mnt/cdrom
 * /mnt/extradrive

File System
Common Linux file systems Microsoft
 * ext2
 * ext3
 * reiserfs
 * swap
 * fat32: vfat
 * DOS: msdos

All supported types:
 * adfs, affs, autofs, coda, coherent, cramfs, debugfs, devpts, efs, ext, ext2, ext3, hfs, hpfs, iso9660, jfs, minix, msdos, ncpfs, nfs, nfs4, ntfs, proc, qnx4, ramfs, reiserfs, romfs, smbfs, sysv, tmpfs, udf, ufs, umsdos, usbfs, vfat, xenix, xfs, xiafs

Options
context=context, fscontext=context and *defcontext=context\
 * async
 * All I/O to the file system should be done asynchronously.
 * atime
 * Update inode access time for each access. This is the default.
 * auto
 * Can be mounted with the -a option.
 * defaults
 * Use default options: rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, and async.
 * dev
 * Interpret character or block special devices on the file system.
 * exec
 * Permit execution of binaries.
 * group
 * Allow an ordinary (i.e., non-root) user to mount the file system if one of his groups matches the group of the device. This option implies the options nosuid and nodev (unless overridden by subsequent options, as in the option line group,dev,suid).
 * mand
 * Allow mandatory locks on this filesystem. See fcntl(2).
 * _netdev
 * The filesystem resides on a device that requires network access (used to prevent the system from attempting to mount these filesystems until the network has been enabled on the system).
 * 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).
 * nodiratime
 * Do not update directory inode access times on this filesystem.
 * noauto
 * Can only be mounted explicitly (i.e., the -a option will not cause the file system to be mounted).
 * nodev
 * Do not interpret character or block special devices on the file system.
 * noexec
 * Do not allow direct execution of any binaries on the mounted file system. (Until recently it was possible to run binaries anyway using a command like /lib/ld*.so /mnt/binary. This trick fails since Linux 2.4.25 / 2.6.0.)
 * nomand
 * Do not allow mandatory locks on this filesystem.
 * 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.)
 * nouser
 * Forbid an ordinary (i.e., non-root) user to mount the file system. This is the default.
 * owner
 * Allow an ordinary (i.e., non-root) user to mount the file system if he is the owner of the device. This option implies the options nosuid and nodev (unless overridden by subsequent options, as in the option line owner,dev,suid).
 * 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. It does not change device or mount point.
 * ro
 * Mount the file system read-only.
 * rw
 * Mount the file system read-write.
 * suid
 * Allow set-user-identifier or set-group-identifier bits to take effect.
 * sync
 * All I/O to the file system should be done synchronously. In case of media with limited number of write cycles (e.g. some flash drives) "sync" may cause life-cycle shortening.
 * dirsync
 * All directory updates within the file system should be done synchronously. This affects the following system calls: creat, link, unlink, symlink, mkdir, rmdir, mknod and rename.
 * user
 * Allow an ordinary user to mount the file system. The name of the mounting user is written to mtab so that he can unmount the file system again. This option implies the options noexec, nosuid, and nodev (unless overridden by subsequent options, as in the option line user,exec,dev,suid).
 * users
 * Allow every user to mount and unmount the file system. This option implies the options noexec, nosuid, and nodev (unless overridden by subsequent options, as in the option line users,exec,dev,suid).
 * See: man mount

Dump
0 or 1 denotes if the partition needs to be dumped, in general, leave it "0"

Fsck
Denotes whether the filesystem should be checked if it was not shut down properly
 * Don't check: 0
 * 1, or 2
 * root should be: 1

=Examples=
 * Hard drive
 * /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat uid=500,gid=500,rw 0 0
 * Sambamount
 * //monkey/Movies /mnt/abbas smbfs username=taco,password=paco

=Sources=
 * http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?style=printable&part=1&chap=8
 * man mount

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