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Chapter 18. Using the mount Command

On Linux, UNIX, and similar operating systems, file systems on different partitions and removable devices (CDs, DVDs, or USB flash drives for example) can be attached to a certain point (the mount point) in the directory tree, and then detached again. To attach or detach a file system, use the mount or umount command respectively. This chapter describes the basic use of these commands, as well as some advanced topics, such as moving a mount point or creating shared subtrees.

18.1. Listing Currently Mounted File Systems

To display all currently attached file systems, run the mount command with no additional arguments:
mount
This command displays the list of known mount points. Each line provides important information about the device name, the file system type, the directory in which it is mounted, and relevant mount options in the following form:
device on directory type type (options)
The findmnt utility, which allows users to list mounted file systems in a tree-like form, is also available from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1. To display all currently attached file systems, run the findmnt command with no additional arguments:
findmnt

18.1.1. Specifying the File System Type

By default, the output of the mount command includes various virtual file systems such as sysfs and tmpfs. To display only the devices with a certain file system type, supply the -t option on the command line:
mount -t type
Similarly, to display only the devices with a certain file system type by using the findmnt command, type:
findmnt -t type
For a list of common file system types, refer to Table 18.1, “Common File System Types”. For an example usage, see Example 18.1, “Listing Currently Mounted ext4 File Systems”.

Example 18.1. Listing Currently Mounted ext4 File Systems

Usually, both / and /boot partitions are formatted to use ext4. To display only the mount points that use this file system, type the following at a shell prompt:
~]$ mount -t ext4
/dev/sda2 on / type ext4 (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext4 (rw)
To list such mount points using the findmnt command, type:
~]$ findmnt -t ext4
TARGET SOURCE    FSTYPE OPTIONS
/      /dev/sda2 ext4   rw,realtime,seclabel,barrier=1,data=ordered
/boot  /dev/sda1 ext4   rw,realtime,seclabel,barrier=1,data=ordered