info > mount(1)

๐Ÿ“˜ MOUNT(8) - System Administration

๐Ÿ“ NAME

mount - mount a filesystem

๐Ÿš€ Quick Reference

Use CaseCommandDescription
Mount a filesystemmount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mntMount device to directory
Mount with optionsmount -o ro,noatime /dev/sda1 /mntMount with read-only, noatime
Mount all fstab entriesmount -aMount all filesystems in fstab
Bind mountmount --bind /old /newRemount part of hierarchy elsewhere
List mounted filesystemsmount [-l]List all mounts, optionally with labels
Move mountmount --move /old /newAtomically move a mounted tree
Remount read-onlymount -o remount,ro /mountpointChange mount options
Loop device mountmount /tmp/disk.img /mnt -o loopMount file as block device

๐Ÿ“‹ SYNOPSIS

mount [-h|-V]
mount [-l] [-t fstype]
mount -a [-fFnrsvw] [-t fstype] [-O optlist]
mount [-fnrsvw] [-o options] device|mountpoint
mount [-fnrsvw] [-t fstype] [-o options] device mountpoint
mount --bind|--rbind|--move olddir newdir
mount --make-[shared|slave|private|unbindable|rshared|rslave|rprivate|runbindable] mountpoint

๐Ÿ“– 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 other 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. 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 ambiguous interpretation of the given argument. For example:

mount --target /mountpoint

The same filesystem may be mounted more than once, and in some cases (e.g., network filesystems) the same filesystem may be mounted on the same mountpoint multiple times. The mount command does not implement any policy to control this behavior. All behavior is controlled by the kernel and it is usually specific to the filesystem driver. The exception is --all, in this case already mounted filesystems are ignored (see --all below for more details).

๐Ÿ” 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.

๐Ÿ”ง 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.

The device names of disk partitions are unstable; hardware reconfiguration, and adding or removing a device can cause changes in names. This is the reason why it's strongly recommended to use filesystem or partition identifiers like UUID or LABEL. Currently supported identifiers (tags):

The command lsblk --fs provides an 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, especially 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,id,partuuid,partlabel} udev symlinks in the /etc/fstab file. Tags are more readable, robust and portable. The mount(8) command internally uses udev symlinks, so the use of symlinks in /etc/fstab has no advantage over tags. For more details see libblkid(3).

The proc filesystem is not associated with a special device, and when mounting it, an arbitrary keyword - for example, proc - can be used instead of a device specification. (The customary choice none is less fortunate: the error message 'none already mounted' from mount can be confusing.)

๐Ÿ“ 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 in parallel.

When mounting a filesystem mentioned in fstab or mtab, it suffices to specify on the command line only the device, or only the mount point.

The programs mount and umount(8) traditionally maintained a list of currently mounted filesystems in the file /etc/mtab. The support for regular classic /etc/mtab is completely disabled at compile time by default, because on current Linux systems it is better to make /etc/mtab a symlink to /proc/mounts instead. The regular mtab file maintained in userspace cannot reliably work with namespaces, containers and other advanced Linux features. If the regular mtab support is enabled, then it's possible to use the file as well as the symlink.

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. This default behaviour can be changed using the --options-mode command-line option. 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, ID, PARTUUID or PARTLABEL) and dir are specified. For example, to mount device foo at /dir:

mount /dev/foo /dir

This default behaviour can be changed by using the --options-source-force command-line option to always read configuration from fstab. For non-root users mount always reads the fstab configuration.

๐Ÿ‘ค 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 a bad idea to use NFS or CIFS source on command line.

Since util-linux 2.35, mount does not exit when user permissions are inadequate according to libmount's internal security rules. Instead, it drops suid permissions and continues as regular non-root user. This behavior supports use-cases where root permissions are not necessary (e.g., fuse filesystems, user namespaces, etc).

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 a member of the group of the special file.

๐Ÿ”— Bind mount operation

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.

It is important to understand that "bind" does not create any second-class or special node in the kernel VFS. The "bind" is just another operation to attach a filesystem. There is nowhere stored information that the filesystem has been attached by a "bind" operation. The olddir and newdir are independent and the olddir may be unmounted.

One can also remount a single file (on a single file). It's also possible to use a 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 can be attached a second place by using:

mount --rbind olddir newdir

Note that the filesystem mount options maintained by the kernel will remain the same as those on the original mount point. The userspace mount options (e.g., _netdev) will not be copied by mount and it's necessary to explicitly specify the options on the mount command line.

Since util-linux 2.27 mount permits changing 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 operation, 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 original 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 via a "remount,bind" operation. The other flags (for example filesystem-specific flags) are silently ignored. It's impossible to change mount options recursively (for example with -o rbind,ro).

Since util-linux 2.31, mount ignores the bind flag from /etc/fstab on a remount operation (if "-o remount" is specified on command line). This is necessary to fully control mount options on remount by command line. In previous versions the bind flag has been always applied and it was impossible to re-define mount options without interaction with the bind semantic. This mount behavior does not affect situations when "remount,bind" is specified in the /etc/fstab file.

๐Ÿ“ฆ 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.

๐Ÿ”„ 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 Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.txt file in the kernel source tree; see also mount_namespaces(7).

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 changing multiple propagation flags with a single mount(2) system call, and the flags cannot be mixed with other mount options and operations.

Since util-linux 2.23 the mount command can be used to do more propagation (topology) changes by one mount(8) call and do it also together with other mount operations. The propagation 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

โš™๏ธ 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 mount command 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 section EXTERNAL HELPERS.

๐Ÿ†Ž -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. The mount command compares filesystem source, target (and fs root for bind mount or btrfs) to detect already mounted filesystems. The kernel table with already mounted filesystems is cached during mount --all. This means that all duplicated fstab entries will be mounted.

The option --all is possible to use for remount operation too. In this case all filters (-t and -O) are applied to the table of already mounted filesystems.

Since version 2.35 is possible to use the command line option -o to alter mount options from fstab (see also --options-mode).

Note that it is a bad practice to use mount -a for fstab checking. The recommended solution is findmnt --verify.

๐Ÿ”— -B, --bind

Remount a subtree somewhere else (so that its contents are available in both places). See above, under Bind mounts.

๐Ÿšซ -c, --no-canonicalize

Don't canonicalize paths. The mount command canonicalizes all paths (from the 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 does not pass this option to the /sbin/mount.type helpers.

๐Ÿงต -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 proceed in parallel. A disadvantage is that the order of the mount operations is undefined. Thus, you cannot use this option if you want to mount both /usr and /usr/spool.

๐ŸŽญ -f, --fake

Causes everything to be done except for the actual system call; if it's not obvious, 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).

๐Ÿ”’ -i, --internal-only

Don't call the /sbin/mount.filesystem helper even if it exists.

๐Ÿท๏ธ -L, --label

Mount the partition that has the specified label.

๐Ÿท๏ธ -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).

๐Ÿ“ฆ -M, --move

Move a subtree to some other place. See above, the subsection The move operation.

๐Ÿ“ -n, --no-mtab

Mount without writing in /etc/mtab. This is necessary for example when /etc is on a read-only filesystem.

๐ŸŒ -N, --namespace

Perform the mount operation in the mount namespace specified by ns. ns is either PID of process running in that namespace or special file representing that namespace.

mount switches to the mount namespace when it reads /etc/fstab, writes /etc/mtab (or writes to /run/mount) and calls the mount(2) system call, otherwise it runs in the original mount namespace. This means that the target namespace does not have to contain any libraries or other requirements necessary to execute the mount(2) call.

See mount_namespaces(7) for more information.

๐Ÿ” -O, --test-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.

โš™๏ธ -o, --options

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-SPECIFIC MOUNT OPTIONS sections.

โš™๏ธ --options-mode

Controls how to combine options from fstab/mtab with options from the command line. mode can be one of ignore, append, prepend or replace. For example, append means that options from fstab are appended to options from the command line. The default value is prepend โ€” it means command line options are evaluated after fstab options. Note that the last option wins if there are conflicting ones.

โš™๏ธ --options-source

Source of default options. source is a comma-separated list of fstab, mtab and disable. disable disables fstab and mtab and disables --options-source-force. The default value is fstab,mtab.

โš™๏ธ --options-source-force

Use options from fstab/mtab even if both device and dir are specified.

๐Ÿ”— -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.

๐Ÿ“– -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.

โš ๏ธ -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. Currently it's supported by the mount.nfs mount helper only.

๐Ÿ“‚ --source

If only one argument for the mount command is given, then the argument might be interpreted as the target (mountpoint) or source (device). This option allows you to explicitly define that the argument is the mount source.

๐Ÿ“‚ --target

If only one argument for the mount command is given, then the argument might be interpreted as the target (mountpoint) or source (device). This option allows you to explicitly define that the argument is the mount target.

๐Ÿ“‚ --target-prefix

Prepend the specified directory to all mount targets. This option can be used to follow fstab, but mount operations are done in another place, for example:

mount --all --target-prefix /chroot -o X-mount.mkdir

mounts all from system fstab to /chroot, all missing mountpoint are created (due to X-mount.mkdir). See also --fstab to use an alternative fstab.

๐Ÿ“„ -T, --fstab

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 configuration is specified beyond standard system configuration.

Note that mount 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.

๐Ÿท๏ธ -t, --types

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(8) support filesystem subtypes. The subtype is defined by a '.subtype' suffix. For example 'fuse.sshfs'. It's recommended to use subtype 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 libblkid(3) 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 filesystem 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 the -t option as well as in an /etc/fstab entry. The list of filesystem types for the -t option 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 execute the program /sbin/mount.type (if that exists) when called with type type. Since different versions of the smbmount program have different calling conventions, /sbin/mount.smbfs may have to be a shell script that sets up the desired call.

๐Ÿท๏ธ -U, --uuid

Mount the partition that has the specified uuid.

๐Ÿ“ข -v, --verbose

Verbose mode.

โœ๏ธ -w, --rw, --read-write

Mount the filesystem read/write. Read-write is the kernel default and the mount default is to try read-only if the previous mount syscall with read-write flags on write-protected devices of filesystems failed.

A synonym is -o rw.

Note that specifying -w on the command line forces mount to never try read-only mount on write-protected devices or already mounted read-only filesystems.

โ„น๏ธ -V, --version

Display version information and exit.

โ“ -h, --help

Display help text and exit.

๐Ÿ“„ 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 ext_N_ 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, ext4, fat, vfat, ufs and xfs):

๐Ÿ—‚๏ธ FILESYSTEM-SPECIFIC MOUNT OPTIONS

This section lists options that are specific to particular filesystems. Where possible, you should first consult filesystem-specific manual pages for details. Some of those pages are listed in the following table.

Filesystem(s)Manual page
btrfsbtrfs(5)
cifsmount.cifs(8)
ext2, ext3, ext4ext4(5)
fusefuse(8)
nfsnfs(5)
tmpfstmpfs(5)
xfsxfs(5)

Note that some of the pages listed above might be available only after you install the respective userland tools.

The following options apply only to certain filesystems. We sort them by filesystem. All options follow the -o flag.

What options are supported depends a bit on the running kernel. Further information may be available in filesystem-specific files in the kernel source subdirectory Documentation/filesystems.

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for adfs

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for affs

๐Ÿ’พ 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:

๐Ÿ’พ 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>.

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for fat

(Note: fat is not a separate filesystem, but a common part of the msdos, umsdos and vfat filesystems.)

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for hfs

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for hpfs

๐Ÿ’พ 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 an 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).

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for jfs

๐Ÿ’พ 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.

๐Ÿ’พ 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.

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for ntfs

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for overlay

Since Linux 3.18 the overlay pseudo filesystem implements a union mount for other filesystems.

An overlay filesystem combines two filesystems - an upper filesystem and a lower filesystem. When a name exists in both filesystems, the object in the upper filesystem is visible while the object in the lower filesystem is either hidden or, in the case of directories, 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

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for reiserfs

Reiserfs is a journaling filesystem.

๐Ÿ’พ 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 :.

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for udf

UDF is the "Universal Disk Format" filesystem defined by OSTA, the Optical Storage Technology Association, and is often used for DVD-ROM, frequently in the form of a hybrid UDF/ISO-9660 filesystem. It is, however, perfectly usable by itself on disk drives, flash drives and other block devices. See also iso9660.

Mount options for debugging and disaster recovery:

Unused historical mount options that may be encountered and should be removed:

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for ufs

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for umsdos

See mount options for msdos. The dotsOK option is explicitly killed by umsdos.

๐Ÿ’พ 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:

๐Ÿ’พ Mount options for usbfs

๐Ÿ” DM-VERITY SUPPORT (EXPERIMENTAL)

The device-mapper verity target provides read-only transparent integrity checking of block devices using kernel crypto API. The mount command can open the dm-verity device and do the integrity verification before on the device filesystem is mounted. Requires libcryptsetup with in libmount (optionally via dlopen(3)). If libcryptsetup supports extracting the root hash of an already mounted device, existing devices will be automatically reused in case of a match. Mount options for dm-verity:

Supported since util-linux v2.35.

For example commands:

mksquashfs /etc /tmp/etc.squashfs
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/etc.hash bs=1M count=10
veritysetup format /tmp/etc.squashfs /tmp/etc.hash
openssl smime -sign -in <hash> -nocerts -inkey private.key \
  -signer private.crt -noattr -binary -outform der -out /tmp/etc.roothash.p7s
mount -o verity.hashdevice=/tmp/etc.hash,verity.roothash=<hash>,\
  verity.roothashsig=/tmp/etc.roothash.p7s /tmp/etc.squashfs /mnt

create squashfs image from /etc directory, verity hash device and mount verified filesystem image to /mnt. The kernel will verify that the root hash is signed by a key from the kernel keyring if roothashsig is used.

๐Ÿ”„ LOOP-DEVICE SUPPORT

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 ext4 /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 re-uses the loop device rather than initializing 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.

๐Ÿšช EXIT STATUS

mount has the following exit status values (the bits can be ORed):

The command mount -a returns 0 (all succeeded), 32 (all failed), or 64 (some failed, some succeeded).

๐Ÿ”ง EXTERNAL HELPERS

The syntax of external mount helpers is:

/sbin/mount.suffix spec dir [-sfnv] [-N namespace] [-o options] [-t type.subtype]

where the suffix is the filesystem type and the -sfnvoN 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, rprivate, slave, rslave, shared, rshared, auto, noauto, comment, x-*, loop, offset and sizelimit to the mount.<suffix> helpers. All other options are used in a comma-separated list as an argument to the -o option.

๐ŸŒ ENVIRONMENT

๐Ÿ“ FILES

See also "The files /etc/fstab, /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts" section above.

๐Ÿ“œ HISTORY

A mount command existed in Version 5 AT&T UNIX.

๐Ÿ› BUGS

๐Ÿ‘ค AUTHORS

Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>

๐Ÿ“š SEE ALSO

mount(2), umount(2), filesystems(5), fstab(5), nfs(5), xfs(5), mount_namespaces(7), xattr(7), e2label(8), findmnt(8), losetup(8), lsblk(8), mke2fs(8), mountd(8), nfsd(8), swapon(8), tune2fs(8), umount(8), xfs_admin(8)

๐Ÿž REPORTING BUGS

For bug reports, use the issue tracker at https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/issues.

๐Ÿ“ฆ AVAILABILITY

The mount command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.

mount(1)
๐Ÿ“˜ MOUNT(8) - System Administration ๐Ÿ“ NAME ๐Ÿš€ Quick Reference ๐Ÿ“‹ SYNOPSIS ๐Ÿ“– DESCRIPTION โš™๏ธ COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS ๐Ÿ“„ FILESYSTEM-INDEPENDENT MOUNT OPTIONS ๐Ÿ—‚๏ธ FILESYSTEM-SPECIFIC MOUNT OPTIONS ๐Ÿ” DM-VERITY SUPPORT (EXPERIMENTAL) ๐Ÿ”„ LOOP-DEVICE SUPPORT ๐Ÿšช EXIT STATUS ๐Ÿ”ง EXTERNAL HELPERS ๐ŸŒ ENVIRONMENT ๐Ÿ“ FILES ๐Ÿ“œ HISTORY ๐Ÿ› BUGS ๐Ÿ‘ค AUTHORS ๐Ÿ“š SEE ALSO ๐Ÿž REPORTING BUGS ๐Ÿ“ฆ AVAILABILITY

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