The /etc/fstab
file is used by some
programs to determine where file systems are to be mounted by
default, in which order, and which must be checked (for integrity
errors) prior to mounting. Create a new file systems table like this:
cat > /etc/fstab << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/fstab
# file system mount-point type options dump fsck
# order
/dev/<xxx>
/ <fff>
defaults 1 1
/dev/<yyy>
swap swap pri=1 0 0
# End /etc/fstab
EOF
Replace <xxx>
,
<yyy>
, and <fff>
with the values
appropriate for the system, for example, sda2
, sda5
, and
ext4
. For details on the six fields
in this file, see man 5
fstab.
Filesystems with MS-DOS or Windows origin (i.e.: vfat, ntfs, smbfs,
cifs, iso9660, udf) need the “iocharset” mount option in order for
non-ASCII characters in file names to be interpreted properly. The
value of this option should be the same as the character set of your
locale, adjusted in such a way that the kernel understands it. This
works if the relevant character set definition (found under File
systems -> Native Language Support) has been compiled into the
kernel or built as a module. The “codepage”
option is also needed for vfat and smbfs filesystems. It should be
set to the codepage number used under MS-DOS in your country. E.g.,
in order to mount USB flash drives, a ru_RU.KOI8-R user would need
the following in the options portion of its mount line in
/etc/fstab
:
noauto,user,quiet,showexec,iocharset=koi8r,codepage=866
The corresponding options fragment for ru_RU.UTF-8 users is:
noauto,user,quiet,showexec,iocharset=utf8,codepage=866
In the latter case, the kernel emits the following message:
FAT: utf8 is not a recommended IO charset for FAT filesystems,
filesystem will be case sensitive!
This negative recommendation should be ignored, since all other values of the “iocharset” option result in wrong display of filenames in UTF-8 locales.
It is also possible to specify default codepage and iocharset values
for some filesystems during kernel configuration. The relevant
parameters are named “Default NLS Option” (CONFIG_NLS_DEFAULT)
, “Default Remote NLS
Option” (CONFIG_SMB_NLS_DEFAULT
), “Default codepage for
FAT” (CONFIG_FAT_DEFAULT_CODEPAGE
), and “Default iocharset for
FAT” (CONFIG_FAT_DEFAULT_IOCHARSET
). There is no way to
specify these settings for the ntfs filesystem at kernel compilation
time.
It is possible to make the ext3 filesystem reliable across power
failures for some hard disk types. To do this, add the barrier=1
mount option to the appropriate entry in
/etc/fstab
. To check if the disk drive
supports this option, run hdparm
on the applicable disk drive. For example, if:
hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep NCQ
returns non-empty output, the option is supported.
Note: Logical Volume Management (LVM) based partitions cannot use the
barrier
option.