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 a special option, utf8, in order for
non-ASCII characters in file names to be interpreted properly. For
non-UTF-8 locales, the value of iocharset
should be set to be the same as the character set of the 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 when configuring the kernel) has been
compiled into the kernel or built as a module. However, if the
character set of the locale is UTF-8, the corresponding option
iocharset=utf8 would make the file system
case sensitive. To fix this, use the special option utf8 instead of iocharset=utf8, for UTF-8 locales. 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. For
example, 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,codepage=866,iocharset=koi8r
The corresponding options fragment for ru_RU.UTF-8 users is:
noauto,user,quiet,showexec,codepage=866,utf8
Note that using iocharset is the default
for iso8859-1 (which keeps the file
system case insensitive), and the utf8
option tells the kernel to convert the file names using UTF-8 so they
can be interpreted in the UTF-8 locale.
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.