MOUNT(8) System Administration MOUNT(8)
NAME
mount - mount a filesystem
SYNOPSIS
mount [-l|-h|-V]
mount -a [-fFnrsvw] [-t fstype] [-O optlist]
mount [-fnrsvw] [-o options] device|dir
mount [-fnrsvw] [-t fstype] [-o options] device dir
DESCRIPTION
All files accessible in a Unix system are arranged in one big tree, the file hierarchy,
rooted at /. These files can be spread out over several devices. The mount command
serves to attach the filesystem found on some device to the big file tree. Conversely,
the umount(8) command will detach it again. The filesystem is used to control how data is
stored on the device or provided in a virtual way by network or another services.
The standard form of the mount command is:
mount -t type device dir
This tells the kernel to attach the filesystem found on device (which is of type type) at
the directory dir. The option -t type is optional. The mount command is usually able to
detect a filesystem. The root permissions are necessary to mount a filesystem by default.
See section "Non-superuser mounts" below for more details. The previous contents (if any)
and owner and mode of dir become invisible, and as long as this filesystem remains
mounted, the pathname dir refers to the root of the filesystem on device.
If only the directory or the device is given, for example:
mount /dir
then mount looks for a mountpoint (and if not found then for a device) in the /etc/fstab
file. It's possible to use the --target or --source options to avoid ambivalent interpre-
tation of the given argument. For example:
mount --target /mountpoint
Listing the mounts
The listing mode is maintained for backward compatibility only.
For more robust and customizable output use findmnt(8), especially in your scripts. Note
that control characters in the mountpoint name are replaced with '?'.
The following command lists all mounted filesystems (of type type):
mount [-l] [-t type]
The option -l adds labels to this listing. See below.
Indicating the device and filesystem
Most devices are indicated by a filename (of a block special device), like /dev/sda1, but
there are other possibilities. For example, in the case of an NFS mount, device may look
like knuth.cwi.nl:/dir. It is also possible to indicate a block special device using its
filesystem label or UUID (see the -L and -U options below), or its partition label or
UUID. Partition identifiers are supported for example for GUID Partition Tables (GPT).
The device name of disk partitions are unstable; hardware reconfiguration, adding or
removing a device can cause change in names. This is reason why it's strongly recommended
to use filesystem or partition identificators like UUID or LABEL.
The command lsblk --fs provides overview of filesystems, LABELs and UUIDs on available
block devices. The command blkid -p <device> provides details about a filesystem on the
specified device.
Don't forget that there is no guarantee that UUIDs and labels are really unique, espe-
cially if you move, share or copy the device. Use lsblk -o +UUID,PARTUUID to verify that
the UUIDs are really unique in your system.
The recommended setup is to use tags (e.g. UUID=uuid) rather than
/dev/disk/by<label,uuid,partuuid,partlabel} udev symlinks in the /etc/fstab file. Tags
are more readable, robust and portable. The mount(8) command internally uses udev sym-
links, so the use of symlinks in /etc/fstab has no advantage over tags. For more details
see libblkid(3).
Note that mount(8) uses UUIDs as strings. The UUIDs from the command line or from
fstab(5) are not converted to internal binary representation. The string representation
of the UUID should be based on lower case characters.
The proc filesystem is not associated with a special device, and when mounting it, an
arbitrary keyword, such as proc can be used instead of a device specification. (The cus-
tomary choice none is less fortunate: the error message `none busy' from umount can be
confusing.)
The files /etc/fstab, /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts
The file /etc/fstab (see fstab(5)), may contain lines describing what devices are usually
mounted where, using which options. The default location of the fstab(5) file can be
overridden with the --fstab path command-line option (see below for more details).
The command
mount -a [-t type] [-O optlist]
(usually given in a bootscript) causes all filesystems mentioned in fstab (of the proper
type and/or having or not having the proper options) to be mounted as indicated, except
for those whose line contains the noauto keyword. Adding the -F option will make mount
fork, so that the filesystems are mounted simultaneously.
When mounting a filesystem mentioned in fstab or mtab, it suffices to specify on the com-
mand line only the device, or only the mount point.
The programs mount and umount traditionally maintained a list of currently mounted
filesystems in the file /etc/mtab. This real mtab file is still supported, but on current
Linux systems it is better to make it a symlink to /proc/mounts instead, because a regular
mtab file maintained in userspace cannot reliably work with namespaces, containers and
other advanced Linux features.
If no arguments are given to mount, the list of mounted filesystems is printed.
If you want to override mount options from /etc/fstab you have to use the -o option:
mount device|dir -o options
and then the mount options from the command line will be appended to the list of options
from /etc/fstab. The usual behavior is that the last option wins if there are conflicting
ones.
The mount program does not read the /etc/fstab file if both device (or LABEL, UUID, PARTU-
UID or PARTLABEL) and dir are specified. For example, to mount device foo at /dir:
mount /dev/foo /dir
Non-superuser mounts
Normally, only the superuser can mount filesystems. However, when fstab contains the user
option on a line, anybody can mount the corresponding filesystem.
Thus, given a line
/dev/cdrom /cd iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide
any user can mount the iso9660 filesystem found on an inserted CDROM using the command:
mount /cd
Note that mount is very strict about non-root users and all paths specified on command
line are verified before fstab is parsed or a helper program is executed. It's strongly
recommended to use a valid mountpoint to specify filesystem, otherwise mount may fail. For
example it's bad idea to use NFS or CIFS source on command line.
For more details, see fstab(5). Only the user that mounted a filesystem can unmount it
again. If any user should be able to unmount it, then use users instead of user in the
fstab line. The owner option is similar to the user option, with the restriction that the
user must be the owner of the special file. This may be useful e.g. for /dev/fd if a
login script makes the console user owner of this device. The group option is similar,
with the restriction that the user must be member of the group of the special file.
Bind mounts
Remount part of the file hierarchy somewhere else. The call is:
mount --bind olddir newdir
or by using this fstab entry:
/olddir /newdir none bind
After this call the same contents are accessible in two places. One can also remount a
single file (on a single file). It's also possible to use the bind mount to create a
mountpoint from a regular directory, for example:
mount --bind foo foo
The bind mount call attaches only (part of) a single filesystem, not possible submounts.
The entire file hierarchy including submounts is attached a second place by using:
mount --rbind olddir newdir
Note that the filesystem mount options will remain the same as those on the original mount
point.
mount(8) since v2.27 allows to change the mount options by passing the relevant options
along with --bind. For example:
mount -o bind,ro foo foo
This feature is not supported by the Linux kernel; it is implemented in userspace by an
additional mount(2) remounting system call. This solution is not atomic.
The alternative (classic) way to create a read-only bind mount is to use the remount oper-
ation, for example:
mount --bind olddir newdir
mount -o remount,bind,ro olddir newdir
Note that a read-only bind will create a read-only mountpoint (VFS entry), but the origi-
nal filesystem superblock will still be writable, meaning that the olddir will be
writable, but the newdir will be read-only.
It's also possible to change nosuid, nodev, noexec, noatime, nodiratime and relatime VFS
entry flags by "remount,bind" operation. It's impossible to change mount options recur-
sively (for example with -o rbind,ro).
mount(8) since v2.31 ignores the bind flag from /etc/fstab on remount operation (if "-o
remount" specified on command line). This is necessary to fully control mount options on
remount by command line. In the previous versions the bind flag has been always applied
and it was impossible to re-define mount options without interaction with the bind seman-
tic. This mount(8) behavior does not affect situations when "remount,bind" is specified in
the /etc/fstab file.
The move operation
Move a mounted tree to another place (atomically). The call is:
mount --move olddir newdir
This will cause the contents which previously appeared under olddir to now be accessible
under newdir. The physical location of the files is not changed. Note that olddir has to
be a mountpoint.
Note also that moving a mount residing under a shared mount is invalid and unsupported.
Use findmnt -o TARGET,PROPAGATION to see the current propagation flags.
Shared subtree operations
Since Linux 2.6.15 it is possible to mark a mount and its submounts as shared, private,
slave or unbindable. A shared mount provides the ability to create mirrors of that mount
such that mounts and unmounts within any of the mirrors propagate to the other mirror. A
slave mount receives propagation from its master, but not vice versa. A private mount
carries no propagation abilities. An unbindable mount is a private mount which cannot be
cloned through a bind operation. The detailed semantics are documented in Documenta-
tion/filesystems/sharedsubtree.txt file in the kernel source tree.
Supported operations are:
mount --make-shared mountpoint
mount --make-slave mountpoint
mount --make-private mountpoint
mount --make-unbindable mountpoint
The following commands allow one to recursively change the type of all the mounts under a
given mountpoint.
mount --make-rshared mountpoint
mount --make-rslave mountpoint
mount --make-rprivate mountpoint
mount --make-runbindable mountpoint
mount(8) does not read fstab(5) when a --make-* operation is requested. All necessary
information has to be specified on the command line.
Note that the Linux kernel does not allow to change multiple propagation flags with a sin-
gle mount(2) system call, and the flags cannot be mixed with other mount options.
Since util-linux 2.23 the mount command allows to use several propagation flags together
and also together with other mount operations. This feature is EXPERIMENTAL. The propa-
gation flags are applied by additional mount(2) system calls when the preceding mount
operations were successful. Note that this use case is not atomic. It is possible to
specify the propagation flags in fstab(5) as mount options (private, slave, shared,
unbindable, rprivate, rslave, rshared, runbindable).
For example:
mount --make-private --make-unbindable /dev/sda1 /foo
is the same as:
mount /dev/sda1 /foo
mount --make-private /foo
mount --make-unbindable /foo
COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS
The full set of mount options used by an invocation of mount is determined by first
extracting the mount options for the filesystem from the fstab table, then applying any
options specified by the -o argument, and finally applying a -r or -w option, when
present.
The command mount does not pass all command-line options to the /sbin/mount.suffix mount
helpers. The interface between mount and the mount helpers is described below in the sec-
tion EXTERNAL HELPERS.
Command-line options available for the mount command are:
-a, --all
Mount all filesystems (of the given types) mentioned in fstab (except for those
whose line contains the noauto keyword). The filesystems are mounted following
their order in fstab.
Note that it is a bad practice to use mount -a for fstab checking. The recommended
solution is findmnt --verify.
-B, --bind
Remount a subtree somewhere else (so that its contents are available in both
places). See above, under Bind mounts.
-c, --no-canonicalize
Don't canonicalize paths. The mount command canonicalizes all paths (from command
line or fstab) by default. This option can be used together with the -f flag for
already canonicalized absolute paths. The option is designed for mount helpers
which call mount -i. It is strongly recommended to not use this command-line
option for normal mount operations.
Note that mount(8) does not pass this option to the /sbin/mount.type helpers.
-F, --fork
(Used in conjunction with -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 paral-
lel. A disadvantage is that the mounts are done in undefined order. Thus, you
cannot use this option if you want to mount both /usr and /usr/spool.
-f, --fake
Causes everything to be done except for the actual system call; if it's not obvi-
ous, this ``fakes'' mounting the filesystem. This option is useful in conjunction
with the -v flag to determine what the mount command is trying to do. It can also
be used to add entries for devices that were mounted earlier with the -n option.
The -f option checks for an existing record in /etc/mtab and fails when the record
already exists (with a regular non-fake mount, this check is done by the kernel).
-i, --internal-only
Don't call the /sbin/mount.filesystem helper even if it exists.
-L, --label label
Mount the partition that has the specified label.
-l, --show-labels
Add the labels in the mount output. mount must have permission to read the disk
device (e.g. be set-user-ID root) for this to work. One can set such a label for
ext2, ext3 or ext4 using the e2label(8) utility, or for XFS using xfs_admin(8), or
for reiserfs using reiserfstune(8).
-M, --move
Move a subtree to some other place. See above, the subsection The move operation.
-n, --no-mtab
Mount without writing in /etc/mtab. This is necessary for example when /etc is on
a read-only filesystem.
-O, --test-opts opts
Limit the set of filesystems to which the -a option applies. In this regard it is
like the -t option except that -O is useless without -a. For example, the command:
mount -a -O no_netdev
mounts all filesystems except those which have the option _netdev specified in the
options field in the /etc/fstab file.
It is different from -t in that each option is matched exactly; a leading no at the
beginning of one option does not negate the rest.
The -t and -O options are cumulative in effect; that is, the command
mount -a -t ext2 -O _netdev
mounts all ext2 filesystems with the _netdev option, not all filesystems that are
either ext2 or have the _netdev option specified.
-o, --options opts
Use the specified mount options. The opts argument is a comma-separated list. For
example:
mount LABEL=mydisk -o noatime,nodev,nosuid
For more details, see the FILESYSTEM-INDEPENDENT MOUNT OPTIONS and FILESYSTEM-SPE-
CIFIC MOUNT OPTIONS sections.
-R, --rbind
Remount a subtree and all possible submounts somewhere else (so that its contents
are available in both places). See above, the subsection Bind mounts.
-r, --read-only
Mount the filesystem read-only. A synonym is -o ro.
Note that, depending on the filesystem type, state and kernel behavior, the system
may still write to the device. For example, ext3 and ext4 will replay the journal
if the filesystem is dirty. To prevent this kind of write access, you may want to
mount an ext3 or ext4 filesystem with the ro,noload mount options or set the block
device itself to read-only mode, see the blockdev(8) command.
-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. Cur-
rently it's supported by the mount.nfs mount helper only.
--source device
If only one argument for the mount command is given then the argument might be
interpreted as target (mountpoint) or source (device). This option allows to
explicitly define that the argument is the mount source.
--target directory
If only one argument for the mount command is given then the argument might be
interpreted as target (mountpoint) or source (device). This option allows to
explicitly define that the argument is the mount target.
-T, --fstab path
Specifies an alternative fstab file. If path is a directory then the files in the
directory are sorted by strverscmp(3); files that start with "." or without an
.fstab extension are ignored. The option can be specified more than once. This
option is mostly designed for initramfs or chroot scripts where additional configu-
ration is specified beyond standard system configuration.
Note that mount(8) does not pass the option --fstab to the /sbin/mount.type
helpers, meaning that the alternative fstab files will be invisible for the
helpers. This is no problem for normal mounts, but user (non-root) mounts always
require fstab to verify the user's rights.
-t, --types fstype
The argument following the -t is used to indicate the filesystem type. The
filesystem types which are currently supported depend on the running kernel. See
/proc/filesystems and /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/fs for a complete list of the
filesystems. The most common are ext2, ext3, ext4, xfs, btrfs, vfat, sysfs, proc,
nfs and cifs.
The programs mount and umount support filesystem subtypes. The subtype is defined
by a '.subtype' suffix. For example 'fuse.sshfs'. It's recommended to use sub-
type notation rather than add any prefix to the mount source (for example
'sshfs#example.com' is deprecated).
If no -t option is given, or if the auto type is specified, mount will try to guess
the desired type. Mount uses the blkid library for guessing the filesystem type;
if that does not turn up anything that looks familiar, mount will try to read the
file /etc/filesystems, or, if that does not exist, /proc/filesystems. All of the
filesystem types listed there will be tried, except for those that are labeled
"nodev" (e.g. devpts, proc and nfs). If /etc/filesystems ends in a line with a
single *, mount will read /proc/filesystems afterwards. While trying, all filesys-
tem types will be mounted with the mount option silent.
The auto type may be useful for user-mounted floppies. Creating a file
/etc/filesystems can be useful to change the probe order (e.g., to try vfat before
msdos or ext3 before ext2) or if you use a kernel module autoloader.
More than one type may be specified in a comma-separated list, for option -t as
well as in an /etc/fstab entry. The list of filesystem types for option -t can be
prefixed with no to specify the filesystem types on which no action should be
taken. The prefix no has no effect when specified in an /etc/fstab entry.
The prefix no can be meaningful with the -a option. For example, the command
mount -a -t nomsdos,smbfs
mounts all filesystems except those of type msdos and smbfs.
For most types all the mount program has to do is issue a simple mount(2) system
call, and no detailed knowledge of the filesystem type is required. For a few
types however (like nfs, nfs4, cifs, smbfs, ncpfs) an ad hoc code is necessary.
The nfs, nfs4, cifs, smbfs, and ncpfs filesystems have a separate mount program.
In order to make it possible to treat all types in a uniform way, mount will exe-
cute the program /sbin/mount.type (if that exists) when called with type type.
Since different versions of the smbmount program have different calling conven-
tions, /sbin/mount.smbfs may have to be a shell script that sets up the desired
call.
-U, --uuid uuid
Mount the partition that has the specified uuid.
-v, --verbose
Verbose mode.
-w, --rw, --read-write
Mount the filesystem read/write. The read-write is kernel default. A synonym is -o
rw.
Note that specify -w on command line forces mount command to never try read-only
mount on write-protected devices. The default is try read-only if the previous
mount syscall with read-write flags failed.
-V, --version
Display version information and exit.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
FILESYSTEM-INDEPENDENT MOUNT OPTIONS
Some of these options are only useful when they appear in the /etc/fstab file.
Some of these options could be enabled or disabled by default in the system kernel. To
check the current setting see the options in /proc/mounts. Note that filesystems also
have per-filesystem specific default mount options (see for example tune2fs -l output for
extN filesystems).
The following options apply to any filesystem that is being mounted (but not every
filesystem actually honors them -“ e.g., the sync option today has an effect only for ext2,
ext3, fat, vfat and ufs):
async All I/O to the filesystem should be done asynchronously. (See also the sync
option.)
atime Do not use the noatime feature, so the inode access time is controlled by kernel
defaults. See also the descriptions of the relatime and strictatime mount options.
noatime
Do not update inode access times on this filesystem (e.g. for faster access on the
news spool to speed up news servers). This works for all inode types (directories
too), so it implies nodiratime.
auto Can be mounted with the -a option.
noauto Can only be mounted explicitly (i.e., the -a option will not cause the filesystem
to be mounted).
context=context, fscontext=context, defcontext=context, and rootcontext=context
The context= option is useful when mounting filesystems that do not support
extended attributes, such as a floppy or hard disk formatted with VFAT, or systems
that are not normally running under SELinux, such as an ext3 formatted disk from a
non-SELinux workstation. You can also use context= on filesystems you do not
trust, such as a floppy. It also helps in compatibility with xattr-supporting
filesystems on earlier 2.4.<x> kernel versions. Even where xattrs are supported,
you can save time not having to label every file by assigning the entire disk one
security context.
A commonly used option for removable media is
context="system_u:object_r:removable_t".
Two other options are fscontext= and defcontext=, both of which are mutually exclu-
sive of the context option. This means you can use fscontext and defcontext with
each other, but neither can be used with context.
The fscontext= option works for all filesystems, regardless of their xattr support.
The fscontext option sets the overarching filesystem label to a specific security
context. This filesystem label is separate from the individual labels on the
files. It represents the entire filesystem for certain kinds of permission checks,
such as during mount or file creation. Individual file labels are still obtained
from the xattrs on the files themselves. The context option actually sets the
aggregate context that fscontext provides, in addition to supplying the same label
for individual files.
You can set the default security context for unlabeled files using defcontext=
option. This overrides the value set for unlabeled files in the policy and
requires a filesystem that supports xattr labeling.
The rootcontext= option allows you to explicitly label the root inode of a FS being
mounted before that FS or inode becomes visible to userspace. This was found to be
useful for things like stateless linux.
Note that the kernel rejects any remount request that includes the context option,
even when unchanged from the current context.
Warning: the context value might contain commas, in which case the value has to be
properly quoted, otherwise mount(8) will interpret the comma as a separator between
mount options. Don't forget that the shell strips off quotes and thus double quot-
ing is required. For example:
mount -t tmpfs none /mnt -o \
'context="system_u:object_r:tmp_t:s0:c127,c456",noexec'
For more details, see selinux(8).
defaults
Use the default options: rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, and async.
Note that the real set of all default mount options depends on kernel and filesys-
tem type. See the beginning of this section for more details.
dev Interpret character or block special devices on the filesystem.
nodev Do not interpret character or block special devices on the file system.
diratime
Update directory inode access times on this filesystem. This is the default.
(This option is ignored when noatime is set.)
nodiratime
Do not update directory inode access times on this filesystem. (This option is
implied when noatime is set.)
dirsync
All directory updates within the filesystem should be done synchronously. This
affects the following system calls: creat, link, unlink, symlink, mkdir, rmdir,
mknod and rename.
exec Permit execution of binaries.
noexec Do not permit direct execution of any binaries on the mounted filesystem.
group Allow an ordinary user to mount the filesystem if one of that user's 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).
iversion
Every time the inode is modified, the i_version field will be incremented.
noiversion
Do not increment the i_version inode field.
mand Allow mandatory locks on this filesystem. See fcntl(2).
nomand Do not allow mandatory locks on this filesystem.
_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).
nofail Do not report errors for this device if it does not exist.
relatime
Update inode access times relative to modify or change time. Access time is only
updated if the previous access time was earlier than the current modify or change
time. (Similar to noatime, but it doesn't break mutt or other applications that
need to know if a file has been read since the last time it was modified.)
Since Linux 2.6.30, the kernel defaults to the behavior provided by this option
(unless noatime was specified), and the strictatime option is required to obtain
traditional semantics. In addition, since Linux 2.6.30, the file's last access
time is always updated if it is more than 1 day old.
norelatime
Do not use the relatime feature. See also the strictatime mount option.
strictatime
Allows to explicitly request full atime updates. This makes it possible for the
kernel to default to relatime or noatime but still allow userspace to override it.
For more details about the default system mount options see /proc/mounts.
nostrictatime
Use the kernel's default behavior for inode access time updates.
lazytime
Only update times (atime, mtime, ctime) on the in-memory version of the file inode.
This mount option significantly reduces writes to the inode table for workloads
that perform frequent random writes to preallocated files.
The on-disk timestamps are updated only when:
- the inode needs to be updated for some change unrelated to file timestamps
- the application employs fsync(2), syncfs(2), or sync(2)
- an undeleted inode is evicted from memory
- more than 24 hours have passed since the i-node was written to disk.
nolazytime
Do not use the lazytime feature.
suid Allow set-user-ID or set-group-ID bits to take effect.
nosuid Do not allow set-user-ID or set-group-ID bits to take effect.
silent Turn on the silent flag.
loud Turn off the silent flag.
owner Allow an ordinary user to mount the filesystem if that user 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 filesystem. This is commonly used to change
the mount flags for a filesystem, especially to make a readonly filesystem
writable. It does not change device or mount point.
The remount operation together with the bind flag has special semantic. See above,
the subsection Bind mounts.
The remount functionality follows the standard way the mount command works with
options from fstab. This means that mount does not read fstab (or mtab) only when
both device and dir are specified.
mount -o remount,rw /dev/foo /dir
After this call all old mount options are replaced and arbitrary stuff from fstab
(or mtab) is ignored, except the loop= option which is internally generated and
maintained by the mount command.
mount -o remount,rw /dir
After this call, mount reads fstab and merges these options with the options from
the command line (-o). If no mountpoint is found in fstab, then a remount with
unspecified source is allowed.
ro Mount the filesystem read-only.
rw Mount the filesystem read-write.
sync All I/O to the filesystem should be done synchronously. In the case of media with
a limited number of write cycles (e.g. some flash drives), sync may cause life-
cycle shortening.
user Allow an ordinary user to mount the filesystem. The name of the mounting user is
written to the mtab file (or to the private libmount file in /run/mount on systems
without a regular mtab) so that this same user can unmount the filesystem again.
This option implies the options noexec, nosuid, and nodev (unless overridden by
subsequent options, as in the option line user,exec,dev,suid).
nouser Forbid an ordinary user to mount the filesystem. This is the default; it does not
imply any other options.
users Allow any user to mount and to unmount the filesystem, even when some other ordi-
nary user mounted it. This option implies the options noexec, nosuid, and nodev
(unless overridden by subsequent options, as in the option line
users,exec,dev,suid).
X-* All options prefixed with "X" are interpreted as comments or as userspace applica-
tion-specific options. These options are not stored in the user space (e.g. mtab
file), nor sent to the mount.type helpers nor to the mount(2) system call. The
suggested format is X-appname.option.
x-* The same as X-* options, but stored permanently in the user space. It means the
options are also available for umount or another operations. Note that maintain
mount options in user space is tricky, because it's necessary use libmount based
tools and there is no guarantee that the options will be always available (for
example after a move mount operation or in unshared namespace).
Note that before util-linux v2.30 the x-* options have not been maintained by lib-
mount and stored in user space (functionality was the same as have X-* now), but
due to growing number of use-cases (in initrd, systemd etc.) the functionality have
been extended to keep existing fstab configurations usable without a change.
X-mount.mkdir[=mode]
Allow to make a target directory (mountpoint). The optional argument mode speci-
fies the filesystem access mode used for mkdir(2) in octal notation. The default
mode is 0755. This functionality is supported only for root users. The option is
also supported as x-mount.mkdir, this notation is deprecated for mount.mkdir since
v2.30.
FILESYSTEM-SPECIFIC MOUNT OPTIONS
The following options apply only to certain filesystems. We sort them by filesystem.
They all follow the -o flag.
What options are supported depends a bit on the running kernel. More info may be found in
the kernel source subdirectory Documentation/filesystems.
Mount options for adfs
uid=value and gid=value
Set the owner and group of the files in the filesystem (default: uid=gid=0).
ownmask=value and othmask=value
Set the permission mask for ADFS 'owner' permissions and 'other' permissions,
respectively (default: 0700 and 0077, respectively). See also /usr/src/linux/Docu-
mentation/filesystems/adfs.txt.
Mount options for affs
uid=value and gid=value
Set the owner and group of the root of the filesystem (default: uid=gid=0, but with
option uid or gid without specified value, the UID and GID of the current process
are taken).
setuid=value and setgid=value
Set the owner and group of all files.
mode=value
Set the mode of all files to value & 0777 disregarding the original permissions.
Add search permission to directories that have read permission. The value is given
in octal.
protect
Do not allow any changes to the protection bits on the filesystem.
usemp Set UID and GID of the root of the filesystem to the UID and GID of the mount point
upon the first sync or umount, and then clear this option. Strange...
verbose
Print an informational message for each successful mount.
prefix=string
Prefix used before volume name, when following a link.
volume=string
Prefix (of length at most 30) used before '/' when following a symbolic link.
reserved=value
(Default: 2.) Number of unused blocks at the start of the device.
root=value
Give explicitly the location of the root block.
bs=value
Give blocksize. Allowed values are 512, 1024, 2048, 4096.
grpquota|noquota|quota|usrquota
These options are accepted but ignored. (However, quota utilities may react to
such strings in /etc/fstab.)
Mount options for btrfs
Btrfs is a copy-on-write filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features
while focusing on fault tolerance, repair, and easy administration.
alloc_start=bytes
Debugging option to force all block allocations above a certain byte threshold on
each block device. The value is specified in bytes, optionally with a K, M, or G
suffix, case insensitive. Default is 1MB.
autodefrag
Disable/enable auto defragmentation. Auto defragmentation detects small random
writes into files and queues them up for the defrag process. Works best for small
files; not well-suited for large database workloads.
check_int|check_int_data|check_int_print_mask=value
These debugging options control the behavior of the integrity checking module(the
BTRFS_FS_CHECK_INTEGRITY config option required).
check_int enables the integrity checker module, which examines all block-write
requests to ensure on-disk consistency, at a large memory and CPU cost.
check_int_data includes extent data in the integrity checks, and implies the
check_int option.
check_int_print_mask takes a bitmask of BTRFSIC_PRINT_MASK_* values as defined in
fs/btrfs/check-integrity.c, to control the integrity checker module behavior.
See comments at the top of fs/btrfs/check-integrity.c for more info.
commit=seconds
Set the interval of periodic commit, 30 seconds by default. Higher values defer
data being synced to permanent storage, with obvious consequences when the system
crashes. The upper bound is not forced, but a warning is printed if it's more than
300 seconds (5 minutes).
compress|compress=type|compress-force|compress-force=type
Control BTRFS file data compression. Type may be specified as "zlib" "lzo" or "no"
(for no compression, used for remounting). If no type is specified, zlib is used.
If compress-force is specified, all files will be compressed, whether or not they
compress well. If compression is enabled, nodatacow and nodatasum are disabled.
degraded
Allow mounts to continue with missing devices. A read-write mount may fail with
too many devices missing, for example if a stripe member is completely missing.
device=devicepath
Specify a device during mount so that ioctls on the control device can be avoided.
Especially useful when trying to mount a multi-device setup as root. May be speci-
fied multiple times for multiple devices.
discard
Disable/enable the discard mount option. The discard function issues frequent com-
mands to let the block device reclaim space freed by the filesystem. This is use-
ful for SSD devices, thinly provisioned LUNs and virtual machine images, but may
have a significant performance impact. (The fstrim command is also available to
initiate batch trims from userspace.)
enospc_debug
Disable/enable debugging option to be more verbose in some ENOSPC conditions.
fatal_errors=action
Action to take when encountering a fatal error:
"bug" - BUG() on a fatal error. This is the default.
"panic" - panic() on a fatal error.
flushoncommit
The flushoncommit mount option forces any data dirtied by a write in a prior trans-
action to commit as part of the current commit. This makes the committed state a
fully consistent view of the filesystem from the application's perspective (i.e.,
it includes all completed filesystem operations). This was previously the behavior
only when a snapshot is created.
inode_cache
Enable free inode number caching. Defaults to off due to an overflow problem when
the free space CRCs don't fit inside a single page.
max_inline=bytes
Specify the maximum amount of space, in bytes, that can be inlined in a metadata B-
tree leaf. The value is specified in bytes, optionally with a K, M, or G suffix,
case insensitive. In practice, this value is limited by the root sector size, with
some space unavailable due to leaf headers. For a 4k sectorsize, max inline data
is ~3900 bytes.
metadata_ratio=value
Specify that 1 metadata chunk should be allocated after every value data chunks.
Off by default.
noacl Enable/disable support for Posix Access Control Lists (ACLs). See the acl(5) man-
ual page for more information about ACLs.
nobarrier
Enable/disable the use of block-layer write barriers. Write barriers ensure that
certain IOs make it through the device cache and are on persistent storage. If
disabled on a device with a volatile (non-battery-backed) write-back cache, the
nobarrier option will lead to filesystem corruption on a system crash or power
loss.
nodatacow
Enable/disable data copy-on-write for newly created files. This option implies
nodatasum, and disables all compression.
nodatasum
Enable/disable data checksumming for newly created files. This option implies dat-
acow.
notreelog
Enable/disable the tree logging used for fsync and O_SYNC writes.
recovery
Enable autorecovery attempts if a bad tree root is found at mount time. Currently
this scans a list of several previous tree roots and tries to use the first read-
able.
rescan_uuid_tree
Force check and rebuild procedure of the UUID tree. This should not normally be
needed.
skip_balance
Skip automatic resume of an interrupted balance operation after mount. May be
resumed with "btrfs balance resume."
nospace_cache
Disable freespace cache loading without clearing the cache.
clear_cache
Force clearing and rebuilding of the disk space cache if something has gone wrong.
ssd|nossd|ssd_spread
Options to control ssd allocation schemes. By default, BTRFS will enable or dis-
able ssd allocation heuristics depending on whether a rotational or non-rotational
disk is in use. The ssd and nossd options can override this autodetection.
The ssd_spread mount option attempts to allocate into big chunks of unused space,
and may perform better on low-end ssds. ssd_spread implies ssd, enabling all other
ssd heuristics as well.
subvol=path
Mount subvolume at path rather than the root subvolume. The path is relative to
the top level subvolume.
subvolid=ID
Mount subvolume specified by an ID number rather than the root subvolume. This
allows mounting of subvolumes which are not in the root of the mounted filesystem.
You can use "btrfs subvolume list" to see subvolume ID numbers.
subvolrootid=objectid (deprecated)
Mount subvolume specified by objectid rather than the root subvolume. This allows
mounting of subvolumes which are not in the root of the mounted filesystem. You
can use "btrfs subvolume show " to see the object ID for a subvolume.
thread_pool=number
The number of worker threads to allocate. The default number is equal to the num-
ber of CPUs + 2, or 8, whichever is smaller.
user_subvol_rm_allowed
Allow subvolumes to be deleted by a non-root user. Use with caution.
Mount options for cifs
See the options section of the mount.cifs(8) man page (cifs-utils package must be
installed).
Mount options for coherent
None.
Mount options for debugfs
The debugfs filesystem is a pseudo filesystem, traditionally mounted on /sys/kernel/debug.
As of kernel version 3.4, debugfs has the following options:
uid=n, gid=n
Set the owner and group of the mountpoint.
mode=value
Sets the mode of the mountpoint.
Mount options for devpts
The devpts filesystem is a pseudo filesystem, traditionally mounted on /dev/pts. In order
to acquire a pseudo terminal, a process opens /dev/ptmx; the number of the pseudo terminal
is then made available to the process and the pseudo terminal slave can be accessed as
/dev/pts/<number>.
uid=value and gid=value
This sets the owner or the group of newly created PTYs to the specified values.
When nothing is specified, they will be set to the UID and GID of the creating
process. For example, if there is a tty group with GID 5, then gid=5 will cause
newly created PTYs to belong to the tty group.
mode=value
Set the mode of newly created PTYs to the specified value. The default is 0600. A
value of mode=620 and gid=5 makes "mesg y" the default on newly created PTYs.
newinstance
Create a private instance of devpts filesystem, such that indices of ptys allocated
in this new instance are independent of indices created in other instances of
devpts.
All mounts of devpts without this newinstance option share the same set of pty
indices (i.e legacy mode). Each mount of devpts with the newinstance option has a
private set of pty indices.
This option is mainly used to support containers in the linux kernel. It is imple-
mented in linux kernel versions starting with 2.6.29. Further, this mount option
is valid only if CONFIG_DEVPTS_MULTIPLE_INSTANCES is enabled in the kernel configu-
ration.
To use this option effectively, /dev/ptmx must be a symbolic link to pts/ptmx. See
Documentation/filesystems/devpts.txt in the linux kernel source tree for details.
ptmxmode=value
Set the mode for the new ptmx device node in the devpts filesystem.
With the support for multiple instances of devpts (see newinstance option above),
each instance has a private ptmx node in the root of the devpts filesystem (typi-
cally /dev/pts/ptmx).
For compatibility with older versions of the kernel, the default mode of the new
ptmx node is 0000. ptmxmode=value specifies a more useful mode for the ptmx node
and is highly recommended when the newinstance option is specified.
This option is only implemented in linux kernel versions starting with 2.6.29.
Further, this option is valid only if CONFIG_DEVPTS_MULTIPLE_INSTANCES is enabled
in the kernel configuration.
Mount options for ext2, ext3 and ext4
See the options section of the ext2(5), ext3(5) or ext4(5) man page (the e2fsprogs package
must be installed).
Mount options for fat
(Note: fat is not a separate filesystem, but a common part of the msdos, umsdos and vfat
filesystems.)
blocksize={512|1024|2048}
Set blocksize (default 512). This option is obsolete.
uid=value and gid=value
Set the owner and group of all files. (Default: the UID and GID of the current
process.)
umask=value
Set the umask (the bitmask of the permissions that are not present). The default
is the umask of the current process. The value is given in octal.
dmask=value
Set the umask applied to directories only. The default is the umask of the current
process. The value is given in octal.
fmask=value
Set the umask applied to regular files only. The default is the umask of the cur-
rent process. The value is given in octal.
allow_utime=value
This option controls the permission check of mtime/atime.
20 If current process is in group of file's group ID, you can change timestamp.
2 Other users can change timestamp.
The default is set from `dmask' option. (If the directory is writable, utime(2) is
also allowed. I.e. ~dmask & 022)
Normally utime(2) checks current process is owner of the file, or it has CAP_FOWNER
capability. But FAT filesystem doesn't have UID/GID on disk, so normal check is
too inflexible. With this option you can relax it.
check=value
Three different levels of pickyness can be chosen:
r[elaxed]
Upper and lower case are accepted and equivalent, long name parts are trun-
cated (e.g. verylongname.foobar becomes verylong.foo), leading and embedded
spaces are accepted in each name part (name and extension).
n[ormal]
Like "relaxed", but many special characters (*, ?, <, spaces, etc.) are
rejected. This is the default.
s[trict]
Like "normal", but names that contain long parts or special characters that
are sometimes used on Linux but are not accepted by MS-DOS (+, =, etc.) are
rejected.
codepage=value
Sets the codepage for converting to shortname characters on FAT and VFAT filesys-
tems. By default, codepage 437 is used.
conv=mode
This option is obsolete and may fail or being ignored.
cvf_format=module
Forces the driver to use the CVF (Compressed Volume File) module cvf_module instead
of auto-detection. If the kernel supports kmod, the cvf_format=xxx option also
controls on-demand CVF module loading. This option is obsolete.
cvf_option=option
Option passed to the CVF module. This option is obsolete.
debug Turn on the debug flag. A version string and a list of filesystem parameters will
be printed (these data are also printed if the parameters appear to be inconsis-
tent).
discard
If set, causes discard/TRIM commands to be issued to the block device when blocks
are freed. This is useful for SSD devices and sparse/thinly-provisioned LUNs.
dos1xfloppy
If set, use a fallback default BIOS Parameter Block configuration, determined by
backing device size. These static parameters match defaults assumed by DOS 1.x for
160 kiB, 180 kiB, 320 kiB, and 360 kiB floppies and floppy images.
errors={panic|continue|remount-ro}
Specify FAT behavior on critical errors: panic, continue without doing anything, or
remount the partition in read-only mode (default behavior).
fat={12|16|32}
Specify a 12, 16 or 32 bit fat. This overrides the automatic FAT type detection
routine. Use with caution!
iocharset=value
Character set to use for converting between 8 bit characters and 16 bit Unicode
characters. The default is iso8859-1. Long filenames are stored on disk in Uni-
code format.
nfs={stale_rw|nostale_ro}
Enable this only if you want to export the FAT filesystem over NFS.
stale_rw: This option maintains an index (cache) of directory inodes which is used
by the nfs-related code to improve look-ups. Full file operations (read/write)
over NFS are supported but with cache eviction at NFS server, this could result in
spurious ESTALE errors.
nostale_ro: This option bases the inode number and file handle on the on-disk loca-
tion of a file in the FAT directory entry. This ensures that ESTALE will not be
returned after a file is evicted from the inode cache. However, it means that
operations such as rename, create and unlink could cause file handles that previ-
ously pointed at one file to point at a different file, potentially causing data
corruption. For this reason, this option also mounts the filesystem readonly.
To maintain backward compatibility, '-o nfs' is also accepted, defaulting to
stale_rw.
tz=UTC This option disables the conversion of timestamps between local time (as used by
Windows on FAT) and UTC (which Linux uses internally). This is particularly useful
when mounting devices (like digital cameras) that are set to UTC in order to avoid
the pitfalls of local time.
time_offset=minutes
Set offset for conversion of timestamps from local time used by FAT to UTC. I.e.,
minutes will be subtracted from each timestamp to convert it to UTC used internally
by Linux. This is useful when the time zone set in the kernel via settimeofday(2)
is not the time zone used by the filesystem. Note that this option still does not
provide correct time stamps in all cases in presence of DST - time stamps in a dif-
ferent DST setting will be off by one hour.
quiet Turn on the quiet flag. Attempts to chown or chmod files do not return errors,
although they fail. Use with caution!
rodir FAT has the ATTR_RO (read-only) attribute. On Windows, the ATTR_RO of the direc-
tory will just be ignored, and is used only by applications as a flag (e.g. it's
set for the customized folder).
If you want to use ATTR_RO as read-only flag even for the directory, set this
option.
showexec
If set, the execute permission bits of the file will be allowed only if the exten-
sion part of the name is .EXE, .COM, or .BAT. Not set by default.
sys_immutable
If set, ATTR_SYS attribute on FAT is handled as IMMUTABLE flag on Linux. Not set
by default.
flush If set, the filesystem will try to flush to disk more early than normal. Not set
by default.
usefree
Use the "free clusters" value stored on FSINFO. It'll be used to determine number
of free clusters without scanning disk. But it's not used by default, because
recent Windows don't update it correctly in some case. If you are sure the "free
clusters" on FSINFO is correct, by this option you can avoid scanning disk.
dots, nodots, dotsOK=[yes|no]
Various misguided attempts to force Unix or DOS conventions onto a FAT filesystem.
Mount options for hfs
creator=cccc, type=cccc
Set the creator/type values as shown by the MacOS finder used for creating new
files. Default values: '????'.
uid=n, gid=n
Set the owner and group of all files. (Default: the UID and GID of the current
process.)
dir_umask=n, file_umask=n, umask=n
Set the umask used for all directories, all regular files, or all files and direc-
tories. Defaults to the umask of the current process.
session=n
Select the CDROM session to mount. Defaults to leaving that decision to the CDROM
driver. This option will fail with anything but a CDROM as underlying device.
part=n Select partition number n from the device. Only makes sense for CDROMs. Defaults
to not parsing the partition table at all.
quiet Don't complain about invalid mount options.
Mount options for hpfs
uid=value and gid=value
Set the owner and group of all files. (Default: the UID and GID of the current
process.)
umask=value
Set the umask (the bitmask of the permissions that are not present). The default
is the umask of the current process. The value is given in octal.
case={lower|asis}
Convert all files names to lower case, or leave them. (Default: case=lower.)
conv=mode
This option is obsolete and may fail or being ignored.
nocheck
Do not abort mounting when certain consistency checks fail.
Mount options for iso9660
ISO 9660 is a standard describing a filesystem structure to be used on CD-ROMs. (This
filesystem type is also seen on some DVDs. See also the udf filesystem.)
Normal 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 filesystem (except that it is read-only, of course).
norock Disable the use of Rock Ridge extensions, even if available. Cf. map.
nojoliet
Disable the use of Microsoft Joliet extensions, even if available. Cf. map.
check={r[elaxed]|s[trict]}
With check=relaxed, a filename is first converted to lower case before doing the
lookup. This is probably only meaningful together with norock and map=normal.
(Default: check=strict.)
uid=value and gid=value
Give all files in the filesystem the indicated user or group id, possibly overrid-
ing the information found in the Rock Ridge extensions. (Default: uid=0,gid=0.)
map={n[ormal]|o[ff]|a[corn]}
For non-Rock Ridge volumes, normal name translation maps upper to lower case ASCII,
drops a trailing `;1', and converts `;' to `.'. With map=off no name translation
is done. See norock. (Default: map=normal.) map=acorn is like map=normal but
also apply Acorn extensions if present.
mode=value
For non-Rock Ridge volumes, give all files the indicated mode. (Default: read and
execute permission for everybody.) Octal mode values require a leading 0.
unhide Also show hidden and associated files. (If the ordinary files and the associated
or hidden files have the same filenames, this may make the ordinary files inacces-
sible.)
block={512|1024|2048}
Set the block size to the indicated value. (Default: block=1024.)
conv=mode
This option is obsolete and may fail or being ignored.
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 16 MB.
session=x
Select number of session on multisession CD.
sbsector=xxx
Session begins from sector xxx.
The following options are the same as for vfat and specifying them only makes sense when
using discs encoded using Microsoft's Joliet extensions.
iocharset=value
Character set to use for converting 16 bit Unicode characters on CD to 8 bit char-
acters. The default is iso8859-1.
utf8 Convert 16 bit Unicode characters on CD to UTF-8.
Mount options for jfs
iocharset=name
Character set to use for converting from Unicode to ASCII. The default is to do no
conversion. Use iocharset=utf8 for UTF8 translations. This requires CON-
FIG_NLS_UTF8 to be set in the kernel .config file.
resize=value
Resize the volume to value blocks. JFS only supports growing a volume, not shrink-
ing it. This option is only valid during a remount, when the volume is mounted
read-write. The resize keyword with no value will grow the volume to the full size
of the partition.
nointegrity
Do not write to the journal. The primary use of this option is to allow for higher
performance when restoring a volume from backup media. The integrity of the volume
is not guaranteed if the system abnormally ends.
integrity
Default. Commit metadata changes to the journal. Use this option to remount a
volume where the nointegrity option was previously specified in order to restore
normal behavior.
errors={continue|remount-ro|panic}
Define the behavior when an error is encountered. (Either ignore errors and just
mark the filesystem erroneous and continue, or remount the filesystem read-only, or
panic and halt the system.)
noquota|quota|usrquota|grpquota
These options are accepted but ignored.
Mount options for minix
None.
Mount options for msdos
See mount options for fat. If the msdos filesystem detects an inconsistency, it reports
an error and sets the file system read-only. The filesystem can be made writable again by
remounting it.
Mount options for ncpfs
Just like nfs, the ncpfs implementation expects a binary argument (a struct
ncp_mount_data) to the mount system call. This argument is constructed by ncpmount(8) and
the current version of mount (2.12) does not know anything about ncpfs.
Mount options for nfs and nfs4
See the options section of the nfs(5) man page (the nfs-utils package must be installed).
The nfs and nfs4 implementation expects a binary argument (a struct nfs_mount_data) to the
mount system call. This argument is constructed by mount.nfs(8) and the current version
of mount (2.13) does not know anything about nfs and nfs4.
Mount options for ntfs
iocharset=name
Character set to use when returning file names. Unlike VFAT, NTFS suppresses names
that contain nonconvertible characters. Deprecated.
nls=name
New name for the option earlier called iocharset.
utf8 Use UTF-8 for converting file names.
uni_xlate={0|1|2}
For 0 (or `no' or `false'), do not use escape sequences for unknown Unicode charac-
ters. For 1 (or `yes' or `true') or 2, use vfat-style 4-byte escape sequences
starting with ":". Here 2 give a little-endian encoding and 1 a byteswapped bigen-
dian encoding.
posix=[0|1]
If enabled (posix=1), the filesystem distinguishes between upper and lower case.
The 8.3 alias names are presented as hard links instead of being suppressed. This
option is obsolete.
uid=value, gid=value and umask=value
Set the file permission on the filesystem. The umask value is given in octal. By
default, the files are owned by root and not readable by somebody else.
Mount options for overlay
Since Linux 3.18 the overlay pseudo filesystem implements a union mount for other filesys-
tems.
An overlay filesystem combines two filesystems - an upper filesystem and a lower filesys-
tem. When a name exists in both filesystems, the object in the upper filesystem is visi-
ble while the object in the lower filesystem is either hidden or, in the case of directo-
ries, merged with the upper object.
The lower filesystem can be any filesystem supported by Linux and does not need to be
writable. The lower filesystem can even be another overlayfs. The upper filesystem will
normally be writable and if it is it must support the creation of trusted.* extended
attributes, and must provide a valid d_type in readdir responses, so NFS is not suitable.
A read-only overlay of two read-only filesystems may use any filesystem type. The options
lowerdir and upperdir are combined into a merged directory by using:
mount -t overlay overlay \
-olowerdir=/lower,upperdir=/upper,workdir=/work /merged
lowerdir=directory
Any filesystem, does not need to be on a writable filesystem.
upperdir=directory
The upperdir is normally on a writable filesystem.
workdir=directory
The workdir needs to be an empty directory on the same filesystem as upperdir.
Mount options for proc
uid=value and gid=value
These options are recognized, but have no effect as far as I can see.
Mount options for ramfs
Ramfs is a memory based filesystem. Mount it and you have it. Unmount it and it is gone.
There are no mount options.
Mount options for reiserfs
Reiserfs is a journaling filesystem.
conv Instructs version 3.6 reiserfs software to mount a version 3.5 filesystem, using
the 3.6 format for newly created objects. This filesystem will no longer be com-
patible with reiserfs 3.5 tools.
hash={rupasov|tea|r5|detect}
Choose which hash function reiserfs will use to find files within directories.
rupasov
A hash invented by Yury Yu. Rupasov. It is fast and preserves locality,
mapping lexicographically close file names to close hash values. This
option should not be used, as it causes a high probability of hash colli-
sions.
tea A Davis-Meyer function implemented by Jeremy Fitzhardinge. It uses hash
permuting bits in the name. It gets high randomness and, therefore, low
probability of hash collisions at some CPU cost. This may be used if EHASH-
COLLISION errors are experienced with the r5 hash.
r5 A modified version of the rupasov hash. It is used by default and is the
best choice unless the filesystem has huge directories and unusual file-name
patterns.
detect Instructs mount to detect which hash function is in use by examining the
filesystem being mounted, and to write this information into the reiserfs
superblock. This is only useful on the first mount of an old format
filesystem.
hashed_relocation
Tunes the block allocator. This may provide performance improvements in some situ-
ations.
no_unhashed_relocation
Tunes the block allocator. This may provide performance improvements in some situ-
ations.
noborder
Disable the border allocator algorithm invented by Yury Yu. Rupasov. This may pro-
vide performance improvements in some situations.
nolog Disable journaling. This will provide slight performance improvements in some sit-
uations at the cost of losing reiserfs's fast recovery from crashes. Even with
this option turned on, reiserfs still performs all journaling operations, save for
actual writes into its journaling area. Implementation of nolog is a work in
progress.
notail By default, reiserfs stores small files and `file tails' directly into its tree.
This confuses some utilities such as LILO(8). This option is used to disable pack-
ing of files into the tree.
replayonly
Replay the transactions which are in the journal, but do not actually mount the
filesystem. Mainly used by reiserfsck.
resize=number
A remount option which permits online expansion of reiserfs partitions. Instructs
reiserfs to assume that the device has number blocks. This option is designed for
use with devices which are under logical volume management (LVM). There is a spe-
cial resizer utility which can be obtained from ftp://ftp.namesys.com/pub/reiserf-
sprogs.
user_xattr
Enable Extended User Attributes. See the attr(5) manual page.
acl Enable POSIX Access Control Lists. See the acl(5) manual page.
barrier=none / barrier=flush
This disables / enables the use of write barriers in the journaling code. bar-
rier=none disables, barrier=flush enables (default). This also requires an IO
stack which can support barriers, and if reiserfs gets an error on a barrier write,
it will disable barriers again with a warning. Write barriers enforce proper on-
disk ordering of journal commits, making volatile disk write caches safe to use, at
some performance penalty. If your disks are battery-backed in one way or another,
disabling barriers may safely improve performance.
Mount options for romfs
None.
Mount options for squashfs
None.
Mount options for smbfs
Just like nfs, the smbfs implementation expects a binary argument (a struct
smb_mount_data) to the mount system call. This argument is constructed by smbmount(8) and
the current version of mount (2.12) does not know anything about smbfs.
Mount options for sysv
None.
Mount options for tmpfs
size=nbytes
Override default maximum size of the filesystem. The size is given in bytes, and
rounded up to entire pages. The default is half of the memory. The size parameter
also accepts a suffix % to limit this tmpfs instance to that percentage of your
physical RAM: the default, when neither size nor nr_blocks is specified, is
size=50%
nr_blocks=
The same as size, but in blocks of PAGE_CACHE_SIZE
nr_inodes=
The maximum number of inodes for this instance. The default is half of the number
of your physical RAM pages, or (on a machine with highmem) the number of lowmem RAM
pages, whichever is the lower.
The tmpfs mount options for sizing (size, nr_blocks, and nr_inodes) accept a suffix k, m
or g for Ki, Mi, Gi (binary kilo (kibi), binary mega (mebi) and binary giga (gibi)) and
can be changed on remount.
mode= Set initial permissions of the root directory.
uid= The user id.
gid= The group id.
mpol=[default|prefer:Node|bind:NodeList|interleave|interleave:NodeList]
Set the NUMA memory allocation policy for all files in that instance (if the kernel
CONFIG_NUMA is enabled) -“ which can be adjusted on the fly via 'mount -o remount
...'
default
prefers to allocate memory from the local node
prefer:Node
prefers to allocate memory from the given Node
bind:NodeList
allocates memory only from nodes in NodeList
interleave
prefers to allocate from each node in turn
interleave:NodeList
allocates from each node of NodeList in turn.
The NodeList format is a comma-separated list of decimal numbers and ranges, a
range being two "hyphen-minus"-separated decimal numbers, the smallest and largest
node numbers in the range. For example, mpol=bind:0-“3,5,7,9-“15
Note that trying to mount a tmpfs with an mpol option will fail if the running ker-
nel does not support NUMA; and will fail if its nodelist specifies a node which is
not online. If your system relies on that tmpfs being mounted, but from time to
time runs a kernel built without NUMA capability (perhaps a safe recovery kernel),
or with fewer nodes online, then it is advisable to omit the mpol option from auto-
matic mount options. It can be added later, when the tmpfs is already mounted on
MountPoint, by 'mount -o remount,mpol=Policy:NodeList MountPoint'.
Mount options for ubifs
UBIFS is a flash filesystem which works on top of UBI volumes. Note that atime is not
supported and is always turned off.
The device name may be specified as
ubiX_Y UBI device number X, volume number Y
ubiY UBI device number 0, volume number Y
ubiX:NAME
UBI device number X, volume with name NAME
ubi:NAME
UBI device number 0, volume with name NAME
Alternative ! separator may be used instead of :.
The following mount options are available:
bulk_read
Enable bulk-read. VFS read-ahead is disabled because it slows down the file sys-
tem. Bulk-Read is an internal optimization. Some flashes may read faster if the
data are read at one go, rather than at several read requests. For example, One-
NAND can do "read-while-load" if it reads more than one NAND page.
no_bulk_read
Do not bulk-read. This is the default.
chk_data_crc
Check data CRC-32 checksums. This is the default.
no_chk_data_crc.
Do not check data CRC-32 checksums. With this option, the filesystem does not
check CRC-32 checksum for data, but it does check it for the internal indexing
information. This option only affects reading, not writing. CRC-32 is always cal-
culated when writing the data.
compr={none|lzo|zlib}
Select the default compressor which is used when new files are written. It is
still possible to read compressed files if mounted with the none option.
Mount options for udf
udf is the "Universal Disk Format" filesystem defined by the Optical Storage Technology
Association, and is often used for DVD-ROM. See also iso9660.
gid= Set the default group.
umask= Set the default umask. The value is given in octal.
uid= Set the default user.
unhide Show otherwise hidden files.
undelete
Show deleted files in lists.
nostrict
Unset strict conformance.
iocharset
Set the NLS character set.
bs= Set the block size. (May not work unless 2048.)
novrs Skip volume sequence recognition.
session=
Set the CDROM session counting from 0. Default: last session.
anchor=
Override standard anchor location. Default: 256.
volume=
Override the VolumeDesc location. (unused)
partition=
Override the PartitionDesc location. (unused)
lastblock=
Set the last block of the filesystem.
fileset=
Override the fileset block location. (unused)
rootdir=
Override the root directory location. (unused)
Mount options for ufs
ufstype=value
UFS is a filesystem widely used in different operating systems. The problem are
differences among implementations. Features of some implementations are undocu-
mented, so its hard to recognize the type of ufs automatically. That's why the
user must specify the type of ufs by mount option. Possible values are:
old Old format of ufs, this is the default, read only. (Don't forget to give
the -r option.)
44bsd For filesystems created by a BSD-like system (NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD).
ufs2 Used in FreeBSD 5.x supported as read-write.
5xbsd Synonym for ufs2.
sun For filesystems created by SunOS or Solaris on Sparc.
sunx86 For filesystems created by Solaris on x86.
hp For filesystems created by HP-UX, read-only.
nextstep
For filesystems created by NeXTStep (on NeXT station) (currently read only).
nextstep-cd
For NextStep CDROMs (block_size == 2048), read-only.
openstep
For filesystems created by OpenStep (currently read only). The same
filesystem type is also used by Mac OS X.
onerror=value
Set behavior on error:
panic If an error is encountered, cause a kernel panic.
[lock|umount|repair]
These mount options don't do anything at present; when an error is encoun-
tered only a console message is printed.
Mount options for umsdos
See mount options for msdos. The dotsOK option is explicitly killed by umsdos.
Mount options for vfat
First of all, the mount options for fat are recognized. The dotsOK option is explicitly
killed by vfat. Furthermore, there are
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 invalid on the vfat filesystem. The escape sequence
that gets used, where u is the Unicode character, is: ':', (u & 0x3f), ((u>>6) &
0x3f), (u>>12).
posix Allow two files with names that only differ in case. This option is obsolete.
nonumtail
First try to make a short name without sequence number, before trying name~num.ext.
utf8 UTF8 is the filesystem safe 8-bit encoding of Unicode that is used by the console.
It can be enabled for the filesystem with this option or disabled with utf8=0,
utf8=no or utf8=false. If `uni_xlate' gets set, UTF8 gets disabled.
shortname=mode
Defines the behavior for creation and display of filenames which fit into 8.3 char-
acters. If a long name for a file exists, it will always be the preferred one for
display. There are four modes:
lower Force the short name to lower case upon display; store a long name when the
short name is not all upper case.
win95 Force the short name to upper case upon display; store a long name when the
short name is not all upper case.
winnt Display the short name as is; store a long name when the short name is not
all lower case or all upper case.
mixed Display the short name as is; store a long name when the short name is not
all upper case. This mode is the default since Linux 2.6.32.
Mount options for usbfs
devuid=uid and devgid=gid and devmode=mode
Set the owner and group and mode of the device files in the usbfs filesystem
(default: uid=gid=0, mode=0644). The mode is given in octal.
busuid=uid and busgid=gid and busmode=mode
Set the owner and group and mode of the bus directories in the usbfs filesystem
(default: uid=gid=0, mode=0555). The mode is given in octal.
listuid=uid and listgid=gid and listmode=mode
Set the owner and group and mode of the file devices (default: uid=gid=0,
mode=0444). The mode is given in octal.
Mount options for xenix
None.
Mount options for xfs
See the options section of the xfs(5) man page (the xfsprogs package must be installed).
THE LOOP DEVICE
One further possible type is a mount via the loop device. For example, the command
mount /tmp/disk.img /mnt -t vfat -o loop=/dev/loop3
will set up the loop device /dev/loop3 to correspond to the file /tmp/disk.img, and then
mount this device on /mnt.
If no explicit loop device is mentioned (but just an option `-o loop' is given), then
mount will try to find some unused loop device and use that, for example
mount /tmp/disk.img /mnt -o loop
The mount command automatically creates a loop device from a regular file if a filesystem
type is not specified or the filesystem is known for libblkid, for example:
mount /tmp/disk.img /mnt
mount -t ext3 /tmp/disk.img /mnt
This type of mount knows about three options, namely loop, offset and sizelimit, that are
really options to losetup(8). (These options can be used in addition to those specific to
the filesystem type.)
Since Linux 2.6.25 auto-destruction of loop devices is supported, meaning that any loop
device allocated by mount will be freed by umount independently of /etc/mtab.
You can also free a loop device by hand, using losetup -d or umount -d.
Since util-linux v2.29 mount command re-uses the loop device rather than initialize a new
device if the same backing file is already used for some loop device with the same offset
and sizelimit. This is necessary to avoid a filesystem corruption.
RETURN CODES
mount has the following return codes (the bits can be ORed):
0 success
1 incorrect invocation or permissions
2 system error (out of memory, cannot fork, no more loop devices)
4 internal mount bug
8 user interrupt
16 problems writing or locking /etc/mtab
32 mount failure
64 some mount succeeded
The command mount -a returns 0 (all succeeded), 32 (all failed), or 64 (some failed, some
succeeded).
EXTERNAL HELPERS
The syntax of external mount helpers is:
/sbin/mount.suffix spec dir [-sfnv] [-o options] [-t type.subtype]
where the suffix is the filesystem type and the -sfnvo options have the same meaning as
the normal mount options. The -t option is used for filesystems with subtypes support
(for example /sbin/mount.fuse -t fuse.sshfs).
The command mount does not pass the mount options unbindable, runbindable, private, rpri-
vate, slave, rslave, shared, rshared, auto, noauto, comment, x-*, loop, offset and size-
limit to the mount.<suffix> helpers. All other options are used in a comma-separated list
as argument to the -o option.
FILES
/etc/fstab filesystem table
/etc/mtab table of mounted filesystems
/etc/mtab~ lock file
/etc/mtab.tmp temporary file
/etc/filesystems a list of filesystem types to try
ENVIRONMENT
LIBMOUNT_FSTAB=<path>
overrides the default location of the fstab file (ignored for suid)
LIBMOUNT_MTAB=<path>
overrides the default location of the mtab file (ignored for suid)
LIBMOUNT_DEBUG=all
enables libmount debug output
LIBBLKID_DEBUG=all
enables libblkid debug output
LOOPDEV_DEBUG=all
enables loop device setup debug output
SEE ALSO
mount(2), umount(2), umount(8), fstab(5), nfs(5), xfs(5), e2label(8), findmnt(8), los-
etup(8), mke2fs(8), mountd(8), nfsd(8), swapon(8), tune2fs(8), xfs_admin(8)
BUGS
It is possible for a corrupted filesystem to cause a crash.
Some Linux filesystems don't support -o sync nor -o dirsync (the ext2, ext3, fat and vfat
filesystems do support synchronous updates (a la BSD) when mounted with the sync option).
The -o remount may not be able to change mount parameters (all ext2fs-specific parameters,
except sb, are changeable with a remount, for example, but you can't change gid or umask
for the fatfs).
It is possible that the files /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts don't match on systems with a
regular mtab file. The first file is based only on the mount command options, but the
content of the second file also depends on the kernel and others settings (e.g. on a
remote NFS server -- in certain cases the mount command may report unreliable information
about an NFS mount point and the /proc/mounts file usually contains more reliable informa-
tion.) This is another reason to replace the mtab file with a symlink to the /proc/mounts
file.
Checking files on NFS filesystems referenced by file descriptors (i.e. the fcntl and ioctl
families of functions) may lead to inconsistent results due to the lack of a consistency
check in the kernel even if noac is used.
The loop option with the offset or sizelimit options used may fail when using older ker-
nels if the mount command can't confirm that the size of the block device has been config-
ured as requested. This situation can be worked around by using the losetup command manu-
ally before calling mount with the configured loop device.
HISTORY
A mount command existed in Version 5 AT&T UNIX.
AUTHORS
Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>
AVAILABILITY
The mount command is part of the util-linux package and is available from https://www.ker-
nel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
util-linux August 2015 MOUNT(8)
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