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” 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.