FsTab

(PeterTaylor) You found a useful helpfile on fstab? I had to get it right by trial and error, assisted by some helpful UFies.

[This One] was pretty good - but no, I learnt by error that although mkfs will let you format a whole device as ext2, it won't actually WORK that way, and adding that entry into fstab before (for example) /proc and /var kills the boot process sufficiently for it to be basically unrecoverable unless you are able to recreate the fstab file manually.  Which I cannot do, because RedHat made it needlessly complicated in the first place and the only editor the rescue mode has that is of any use is cat and the 'boot to recover' cd doesn't actually give you access to (or even mount points for) the hard drive.  Nearly downloaded the cd for version nine, will be nuking and re-installing when I get home.  --Vitenka (so, explain to me why kudzu detected my new drive, said it had set it up, and abandoned me there?)

Uh - what's wrong with man fstab? Worked for me.. - MoonShadow

man fstab was a good start, but failed utterly to explain what some of those numbers meant.  --Vitenka

(PeterTaylor) Quote from "man fstab" (my emphasis indicated with **text**):

       **The  first  field,  (fs_spec),  describes  the block special device or
       remote filesystem to be mounted.**

       For ordinary mounts it will hold (a link to) a  block  special  device
       node  (as  created  by  mknod(8))  for  the device to be mounted, like
       `/dev/cdrom'  or  `/dev/sdb7'.   For  NFS   mounts   one   will   have
       <host>:<dir>, e.g., `knuth.aeb.nl:/'. **For procfs, use `proc'.**

       Instead of giving the device explicitly, one may indicate the (ext2 or
       XFS) filesystem that is to be mounted by its UUID or volume label (cf.
       e2label(8)  or  xfs_admin(8)),  writing  LABEL=<label> or UUID=<uuid>,
       e.g.,  `LABEL=Boot'  or   `UUID=3e6be9de-8139-11d1-9106-a43f08d823a6'.
       This  will make the system more robust: adding or removing a SCSI disk
       changes the disk device name but not the filesystem volume label.

       **The second  field,  (fs_file),  describes  the  mount  point  for  the
       filesystem.   For  swap  partitions, this field should be specified as
       `none'.** If the name of the mount point contains spaces  these  can  be
       escaped as `\040'.

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
**none**                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
**none                    /proc                   proc**    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
**/dev/hda5               swap**                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             auto    noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

You can probably see why I was confused, especially since I couldn't find a definition of "mount point".

Those last two numbers (per row) really confused me - they don't seem to be referenced anywhere.  I found in a FAQ that the only purpose of one of them is to say which order the partitions should be checked for errors.  Like I'd ever care enough about that to set it!  --Vitenka

My version of man fstab (dated 15 June 1999) has got documentation on those two numbers, which are called fs_freq (interpreted by 'dump' to decide whether to dump this fs or not), and fs_passno (order of checks).  Importantly, fs_passno must be 1 for the root fs, and 2 for others.  If it's 0 fsck won't check it. --Mjb67