Chapter 6. File Systems and Mount Points

1. Principles
2. Partitioning a Hard Disk, Formatting a Partition
3. The mount and umount Commands

As we have seen in Chapter 2, Disks and Partitions, all the files of the system are organized in a single tree. And actually each time we want to access a removable device such as a CD-ROM or a remote location on a file server, its content will be literally “grafted” on some branch of the tree.

Figure 6.1. Mount Points Illustrated

Mount Points Illustrated

Figure 6.1, “Mount Points Illustrated” shows this: the root, made of a GNU/Linux partition contains another linux partition for /home/ but also a Windows® one, a remote share from a file server (either Windows® or UNIX®), and a USB key. Nowadays many devices can be mounted on a GNU/Linux filesystem, including almost all existing filesystem types, WebDAV and even exotic things such as Googletm mail...

In order to better grasp the concepts around mount points, we base this chapter on a practical case. Suppose you have just purchased a brand new hard disk with no partitions on it. Your Mandriva Linux partition is completely full, and as you need more space, you decide to move a whole section of the tree structure[10] to your new hard disk. Because your new disk has a large capacity, you decide to move your biggest directory to it: /usr.

We will use this example along this chapter starting Section 2, “Partitioning a Hard Disk, Formatting a Partition”, but first a bit of theory.



[10] Our example assumes that the whole tree is contained in a single partition.