MOUNT(8) System Administration MOUNT(8)
NAME
mount - mount a filesystem
SYNOPSIS
mount [-lhV]
mount -a [-fFnrsvw] [-t vfstype] [-O optlist]
mount [-fnrsvw] [-o option[,option]...] device|dir
mount [-fnrsvw] [-t vfstype] [-o options] device dir
DESCRIPTION
All files accessible in a Unix system are arranged in one big tree, the file hierarchy, rooted at /. These files can be
spread out over several devices. The mount command serves to attach the filesystem found on some device to the big file
tree. Conversely, the umount(8) command will detach it again.
The standard form of the mount command, is
mount -t type device dir
This tells the kernel to attach the filesystem found on device (which is of type type) at the directory dir. The previous
contents (if any) and owner and mode of dir become invisible, and as long as this filesystem remains mounted, the pathname
dir refers to the root of the filesystem on device.
If only directory or device is given, for example:
mount /dir
then mount looks for a mountpoint and if not found then for a device in the /etc/fstab file.
The listing and help.
Three forms of invocation do not actually mount anything:
mount -h
prints a help message
mount -V
prints a version string
mount [-l] [-t type]
lists all mounted filesystems (of type type). The option -l adds the labels in this listing. See below.
The device indication.
Most devices are indicated by a file name (of a block special device), like /dev/sda1, but there are other possibil‐
ities. For example, in the case of an NFS mount, device may look like knuth.cwi.nl:/dir. It is possible to indicate
a block special device using its volume LABEL or UUID (see the -L and -U options below).
The recommended setup is to use LABEL= or UUID= tags rather than /dev/disk/by-{label,uuid} udev sym‐
links in the /etc/fstab file. The tags are more readable, robust and portable. The mount(8) command internally uses
udev symlinks, so the use symlinks in /etc/fstab has no advantage over LABEL=/UUID=. For more details see lib‐
blkid(3).
Note that mount(8) uses UUIDs as strings. The UUIDs from command line or fstab(5) are not converted to internal
binary representation. The string representation of the UUID should be based on lower case characters.
The proc filesystem is not associated with a special device, and when mounting it, an arbitrary keyword, such as
proc can be used instead of a device specification. (The customary choice none is less fortunate: the error message
`none busy' from umount can be confusing.)
The /etc/fstab, /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts files.
The file /etc/fstab (see fstab(5)), may contain lines describing what devices are usually mounted where, using which
options.
The command
mount -a [-t type] [-O optlist]
(usually given in a bootscript) causes all filesystems mentioned in fstab (of the proper type and/or having or not
having the proper options) to be mounted as indicated, except for those whose line contains the noauto keyword.
Adding the -F option will make mount fork, so that the filesystems are mounted simultaneously.
When mounting a filesystem mentioned in fstab or mtab, it suffices to give only the device, or only the mount point.
The programs mount and umount maintain a list of currently mounted filesystems in the file /etc/mtab. If no argu‐
ments are given to mount, this list is printed.
The mount program does not read the /etc/fstab file if device (or LABEL/UUID) and dir are specified. For example:
mount /dev/foo /dir
If you want to override mount options from /etc/fstab you have to use:
mount device|dir -o
and then the mount options from command line will be appended to the list of options from /etc/fstab. The usual be‐
haviour is that the last option wins if there is more duplicated options.
When the proc filesystem is mounted (say at /proc), the files /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts have very similar contents.
The former has somewhat more information, such as the mount options used, but is not necessarily up-to-date (cf. the
-n option below). It is possible to replace /etc/mtab by a symbolic link to /proc/mounts, and especially when you
have very large numbers of mounts things will be much faster with that symlink, but some information is lost that
way, and in particular using the "user" option will fail.
The non-superuser mounts.
Normally, only the superuser can mount filesystems. However, when fstab contains the user option on a line, anybody
can mount the corresponding system.
Thus, given a line
/dev/cdrom /cd iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide
any user can mount the iso9660 filesystem found on his CDROM using the command
mount /dev/cdrom
or
mount /cd
For more details, see fstab(5). Only the user that mounted a filesystem can unmount it again. If any user should
be able to unmount, then use users instead of user in the fstab line. The owner option is similar to the user
option, with the restriction that the user must be the owner of the special file. This may be useful e.g. for
/dev/fd if a login script makes the console user owner of this device. The group option is similar, with the
restriction that the user must be member of the group of the special file.
The bind mounts.
Since Linux 2.4.0 it is possible to remount part of the file hierarchy somewhere else. The call is
mount --bind olddir newdir
or shortoption
mount -B olddir newdir
or fstab entry is:
/olddir /newdir none bind
After this call the same contents is accessible in two places. One can also remount a single file (on a single
file). It's also possible to use the bind mount to create a mountpoint from a regular directory, for example:
mount --bind foo foo
The bind mount call attaches only (part of) a single filesystem, not possible submounts. The entire file hierarchy
including submounts is attached a second place using
mount --rbind olddir newdir
or shortoption
mount -R olddir newdir
Note that the filesystem mount options will remain the same as those on the original mount point, and cannot be
changed by passing the -o option along with --bind/--rbind. The mount options can be changed by a separate remount
command, for example:
mount --bind olddir newdir
mount -o remount,ro newdir
Note that behavior of the remount operation depends on the /etc/mtab file. The first command stores the 'bind' flag
to the /etc/mtab file and the second command reads the flag from the file. If you have a system without the
/etc/mtab file or if you explicitly define source and target for the remount command (then mount(8) does not read
/etc/mtab), then you have to use bind flag (or option) for the remount command too. For example:
mount --bind olddir newdir
mount -o remount,ro,bind olddir newdir
The move operation.
Since Linux 2.5.1 it is possible to atomically move a mounted tree to another place. The call is
mount --move olddir newdir
or shortoption
mount -M olddir newdir
This will cause the contents which previously appeared under olddir to be accessed under newdir. The physical loca‐
tion of the files is not changed. Note that the olddir has to be a mountpoint.
The shared subtrees operations.
Since Linux 2.6.15 it is possible to mark a mount and its submounts as shared, private, slave or unbindable. A
shared mount provides ability to create mirrors of that mount such that mounts and umounts within any of the mirrors
propagate to the other mirror. A slave mount receives propagation from its master, but any not vice-versa. A pri‐
vate mount carries no propagation abilities. A unbindable mount is a private mount which cannot be cloned through a
bind operation. Detailed semantics is documented in Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.txt file in the kernel
source tree.
mount --make-shared mountpoint
mount --make-slave mountpoint
mount --make-private mountpoint
mount --make-unbindable mountpoint
The following commands allows one to recursively change the type of all the mounts under a given mountpoint.
mount --make-rshared mountpoint
mount --make-rslave mountpoint
mount --make-rprivate mountpoint
mount --make-runbindable mountpoint
COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
The full set of mount options used by an invocation of mount is determined by first extracting the mount options for the
filesystem from the fstab table, then applying any options specified by the -o argument, and finally applying a -r or -w
option, when present.
Command line options available for the mount command:
-V, --version
Output version.
-h, --help
Print a help message.
-v, --verbose
Verbose mode.
-a, --all
Mount all filesystems (of the given types) mentioned in fstab.
-F, --fork
(Used in conjunction with -a.) Fork off a new incarnation of mount for each device. This will do the mounts on
different devices or different NFS servers in parallel. This has the advantage that it is faster; also NFS timeouts
go in parallel. A disadvantage is that the mounts are done in undefined order. Thus, you cannot use this option if
you want to mount both /usr and /usr/spool.
-f, --fake
Causes everything to be done except for the actual system call; if it's not obvious, this ``fakes'' mounting the
filesystem. This option is useful in conjunction with the -v flag to determine what the mount command is trying to
do. It can also be used to add entries for devices that were mounted earlier with the -n option. The -f option
checks for existing record in /etc/mtab and fails when the record already exists (with regular non-fake mount, this
check is done by kernel).
-i, --internal-only
Don't call the /sbin/mount. helper even if it exists.
-l Add the labels in the mount output. Mount must have permission to read the disk device (e.g. be suid root) for this
to work. One can set such a label for ext2, ext3 or ext4 using the e2label(8) utility, or for XFS using
xfs_admin(8), or for reiserfs using reiserfstune(8).
-n, --no-mtab
Mount without writing in /etc/mtab. This is necessary for example when /etc is on a read-only filesystem.
--no-canonicalize
Don't canonicalize paths. The mount command canonicalizes all paths (from command line or fstab) and stores canoni‐
calized paths to the /etc/mtab file. This option can be used together with the -f flag for already canonicalized
absolut paths.
-p, --pass-fd num
In case of a loop mount with encryption, read the passphrase from file descriptor num instead of from the terminal.
-s Tolerate sloppy mount options rather than failing. This will ignore mount options not supported by a filesystem
type. Not all filesystems support this option. This option exists for support of the Linux autofs-based automounter.
-r, --read-only
Mount the filesystem read-only. A synonym is -o ro.
Note that, depending on the filesystem type, state and kernel behavior, the system may still write to the device.
For example, Ext3 or ext4 will replay its journal if the filesystem is dirty. To prevent this kind of write access,
you may want to mount ext3 or ext4 filesystem with "ro,noload" mount options or set the block device to read-only
mode, see command blockdev(8).
-w, --rw
Mount the filesystem read/write. This is the default. A synonym is -o rw.
-L label
Mount the partition that has the specified label.
-U uuid
Mount the partition that has the specified uuid. These two options require the file /proc/partitions (present since
Linux 2.1.116) to exist.
-t, --types vfstype
The argument following the -t is used to indicate the filesystem type. The filesystem types which are currently
supported include: adfs, affs, autofs, cifs, coda, coherent, cramfs, debugfs, devpts, efs, ext, ext2, ext3, ext4,
hfs, hfsplus, hpfs, iso9660, jfs, minix, msdos, ncpfs, nfs, nfs4, ntfs, proc, qnx4, ramfs, reiserfs, romfs,
squashfs, smbfs, sysv, tmpfs, ubifs, udf, ufs, umsdos, usbfs, vfat, xenix, xfs, xiafs. Note that coherent, sysv and
xenix are equivalent and that xenix and coherent will be removed at some point in the future — use sysv instead.
Since kernel version 2.1.21 the types ext and xiafs do not exist anymore. Earlier, usbfs was known as usbdevfs.
Note, the real list of all supported filesystems depends on your kernel.
The programs mount and umount support filesystem subtypes. The subtype is defined by '.subtype' suffix. For exam‐
ple 'fuse.sshfs'. It's recommended to use subtype notation rather than add any prefix to the mount source (for
example 'sshfs#example.com' is depreacated).
For most types all the mount program has to do is issue a simple mount(2) system call, and no detailed knowledge of
the filesystem type is required. For a few types however (like nfs, nfs4, cifs, smbfs, ncpfs) ad hoc code is neces‐
sary. The nfs, nfs4, cifs, smbfs, and ncpfs filesystems have a separate mount program. In order to make it possible
to treat all types in a uniform way, mount will execute the program /sbin/mount.TYPE (if that exists) when called
with type TYPE. Since various versions of the smbmount program have different calling conventions,
/sbin/mount.smbfs may have to be a shell script that sets up the desired call.
If no -t option is given, or if the auto type is specified, mount will try to guess the desired type. Mount uses
the blkid library for guessing the filesystem type; if that does not turn up anything that looks familiar, mount
will try to read the file /etc/filesystems, or, if that does not exist, /proc/filesystems. All of the filesystem
types listed there will be tried, except for those that are labeled "nodev" (e.g., devpts, proc and nfs). If
/etc/filesystems ends in a line with a single * only, mount will read /proc/filesystems afterwards.
The auto type may be useful for user-mounted floppies. Creating a file /etc/filesystems can be useful to change the
probe order (e.g., to try vfat before msdos or ext3 before ext2) or if you use a kernel module autoloader.
More than one type may be specified in a comma separated list. The list of filesystem types can be prefixed with no
to specify the filesystem types on which no action should be taken. (This can be meaningful with the -a option.)
For example, the command:
mount -a -t nomsdos,ext
mounts all filesystems except those of type msdos and ext.
-O, --test-opts opts
Used in conjunction with -a, to limit the set of filesystems to which the -a is applied. Like -t in this regard
except that it is useless except in the context of -a. For example, the command:
mount -a -O no_netdev
mounts all filesystems except those which have the option _netdev specified in the options field in the /etc/fstab
file.
It is different from -t in that each option is matched exactly; a leading no at the beginning of one option does not
negate the rest.
The -t and -O options are cumulative in effect; that is, the command
mount -a -t ext2 -O _netdev
mounts all ext2 filesystems with the _netdev option, not all filesystems that are either ext2 or have the _netdev
option specified.
-o, --options opts
Options are specified with a -o flag followed by a comma separated string of options. For example:
mount LABEL=mydisk -o noatime,nouser
For more details, see FILESYSTEM INDEPENDENT MOUNT OPTIONS and FILESYSTEM SPECIFIC MOUNT OPTIONS sections.
-B, --bind
Remount a subtree somewhere else (so that its contents are available in both places). See above.
-R, --rbind
Remount a subtree and all possible submounts somewhere else (so that its contents are available in both places). See
above.
-M, --move
Move a subtree to some other place. See above.
FILESYSTEM INDEPENDENT MOUNT OPTIONS
Some of these options are only useful when they appear in the /etc/fstab file.
Some of these options could be enabled or disabled by default in the system kernel. To check the current setting see the
options in /proc/mounts.
The following options apply to any filesystem that is being mounted (but not every filesystem actually honors them - e.g.,
the sync option today has effect only for ext2, ext3, fat, vfat and ufs):
async All I/O to the filesystem should be done asynchronously. (See also the sync option.)
atime Do not use noatime feature, then the inode access time is controlled by kernel defaults. See also the description
for strictatime and reatime mount options.
noatime
Do not update inode access times on this filesystem (e.g., for faster access on the news spool to speed up news
servers).
auto Can be mounted with the -a option.
noauto Can only be mounted explicitly (i.e., the -a option will not cause the filesystem to be mounted).
context=context, fscontext=context, defcontext=context and rootcontext=context
The context= option is useful when mounting filesystems that do not support extended attributes, such as a floppy or
hard disk formatted with VFAT, or systems that are not normally running under SELinux, such as an ext3 formatted
disk from a non-SELinux workstation. You can also use context= on filesystems you do not trust, such as a floppy. It
also helps in compatibility with xattr-supporting filesystems on earlier 2.4. kernel versions. Even where xattrs
are supported, you can save time not having to label every file by assigning the entire disk one security context.
A commonly used option for removable media is context=system_u:object_r:removable_t.
Two other options are fscontext= and defcontext=, both of which are mutually exclusive of the context option. This
means you can use fscontext and defcontext with each other, but neither can be used with context.
The fscontext= option works for all filesystems, regardless of their xattr support. The fscontext option sets the
overarching filesystem label to a specific security context. This filesystem label is separate from the individual
labels on the files. It represents the entire filesystem for certain kinds of permission checks, such as during
mount or file creation. Individual file labels are still obtained from the xattrs on the files themselves. The con‐
text option actually sets the aggregate context that fscontext provides, in addition to supplying the same label for
individual files.
You can set the default security context for unlabeled files using defcontext= option. This overrides the value set
for unlabeled files in the policy and requires a filesystem that supports xattr labeling.
The rootcontext= option allows you to explicitly label the root inode of a FS being mounted before that FS or inode
because visable to userspace. This was found to be useful for things like stateless linux.
Note that kernel rejects any remount request that includes the context option even if unchanged from the current
context.
For more details, see selinux(8)
defaults
Use default options: rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, and async.
dev Interpret character or block special devices on the filesystem.
nodev Do not interpret character or block special devices on the file system.
diratime
Update directory inode access times on this filesystem. This is the default.
nodiratime
Do not update directory inode access times on this filesystem.
dirsync
All directory updates within the filesystem should be done synchronously. This affects the following system calls:
creat, link, unlink, symlink, mkdir, rmdir, mknod and rename.
exec Permit execution of binaries.
noexec Do not allow direct execution of any binaries on the mounted filesystem. (Until recently it was possible to run
binaries anyway using a command like /lib/ld*.so /mnt/binary. This trick fails since Linux 2.4.25 / 2.6.0.)
group Allow an ordinary (i.e., non-root) user to mount the filesystem if one of his groups matches the group of the
device. This option implies the options nosuid and nodev (unless overridden by subsequent options, as in the option
line group,dev,suid).
encryption
Specifies an encryption algorithm to use. Used in conjunction with the loop option.
keybits
Specifies the key size to use for an encryption algorithm. Used in conjunction with the loop and encryption options.
nofail Do not report errors for this device if it does not exist. iversion Every time the inode is modified, the
i_version field will be incremented.
noiversion
Do not increment the i_version inode field.
mand Allow mandatory locks on this filesystem. See fcntl(2).
nomand Do not allow mandatory locks on this filesystem.
_netdev
The filesystem resides on a device that requires network access (used to prevent the system from attempting to mount
these filesystems until the network has been enabled on the system).
nofail Do not report errors for this device if it does not exist.
relatime
Update inode access times relative to modify or change time. Access time is only updated if the previous access
time was earlier than the current modify or change time. (Similar to noatime, but doesn't break mutt or other appli‐
cations that need to know if a file has been read since the last time it was modified.)
Since Linux 2.6.30, the kernel defaults to the behavior provided by this option (unless noatime was specified), and
the strictatime option is required to obtain traditional semantics. In addition, since Linux 2.6.30, the file's last
access time is always updated if it is more than 1 day old.
norelatime
Do not use relatime feature. See also the strictatime mount option.
strictatime
Allows to explicitly requesting full atime updates. This makes it possible for kernel to defaults to relatime or
noatime but still allow userspace to override it. For more details about the default system mount options see
/proc/mounts.
nostrictatime
Use the kernel's default behaviour for inode access time updates.
suid Allow set-user-identifier or set-group-identifier bits to take effect.
nosuid Do not allow set-user-identifier or set-group-identifier bits to take effect. (This seems safe, but is in fact
rather unsafe if you have suidperl(1) installed.)
silent Turn on the silent flag.
loud Turn off the silent flag.
owner Allow an ordinary (i.e., non-root) user to mount the filesystem if he is the owner of the device. This option
implies the options nosuid and nodev (unless overridden by subsequent options, as in the option line
owner,dev,suid).
remount
Attempt to remount an already-mounted filesystem. This is commonly used to change the mount flags for a filesystem,
especially to make a readonly filesystem writable. It does not change device or mount point.
The remount functionality follows the standard way how the mount command works with options from fstab. It means the
mount command doesn't read fstab (or mtab) only when a device and dir are fully specified.
mount -o remount,rw /dev/foo /dir
After this call all old mount options are replaced and arbitrary stuff from fstab is ignored, except the loop=
option which is internally generated and maintained by the mount command.
mount -o remount,rw /dir
After this call mount reads fstab (or mtab) and merges these options with options from command line ( -o ).
ro Mount the filesystem read-only.
rw Mount the filesystem read-write.
sync All I/O to the filesystem should be done synchronously. In case of media with limited number of write cycles (e.g.
some flash drives) "sync" may cause life-cycle shortening.
user Allow an ordinary user to mount the filesystem. The name of the mounting user is written to mtab so that he can
unmount the filesystem again. This option implies the options noexec, nosuid, and nodev (unless overridden by sub‐
sequent options, as in the option line user,exec,dev,suid).
nouser Forbid an ordinary (i.e., non-root) user to mount the filesystem. This is the default.
users Allow every user to mount and unmount the filesystem. This option implies the options noexec, nosuid, and nodev
(unless overridden by subsequent options, as in the option line users,exec,dev,suid).
FILESYSTEM SPECIFIC MOUNT OPTIONS
The following options apply only to certain filesystems. We sort them by filesystem. They all follow the -o flag.
What options are supported depends a bit on the running kernel. More info may be found in the kernel source subdirectory
Documentation/filesystems.
Mount options for adfs
uid=value and gid=value
Set the owner and group of the files in the filesystem (default: uid=gid=0).
ownmask=value and othmask=value
Set the permission mask for ADFS 'owner' permissions and 'other' permissions, respectively (default: 0700 and 0077,
respectively). See also /usr/src/linux/Documentation/filesystems/adfs.txt.
Mount options for affs
uid=value and gid=value
Set the owner and group of the root of the filesystem (default: uid=gid=0, but with option uid or gid without speci‐
fied value, the uid and gid of the current process are taken).
setuid=value and setgid=value
Set the owner and group of all files.
mode=value
Set the mode of all files to value & 0777 disregarding the original permissions. Add search permission to directo‐
ries that have read permission. The value is given in octal.
protect
Do not allow any changes to the protection bits on the filesystem.
usemp Set uid and gid of the root of the filesystem to the uid and gid of the mount point upon the first sync or umount,
and then clear this option. Strange...
verbose
Print an informational message for each successful mount.
prefix=string
Prefix used before volume name, when following a link.
volume=string
Prefix (of length at most 30) used before '/' when following a symbolic link.
reserved=value
(Default: 2.) Number of unused blocks at the start of the device.
root=value
Give explicitly the location of the root block.
bs=value
Give blocksize. Allowed values are 512, 1024, 2048, 4096.
grpquota|noquota|quota|usrquota
These options are accepted but ignored. (However, quota utilities may react to such strings in /etc/fstab.)
Mount options for cifs
See the options section of the mount.cifs(8) man page (cifs-utils package must be installed).
Mount options for coherent
None.
Mount options for debugfs
The debugfs filesystem is a pseudo filesystem, traditionally mounted on /sys/kernel/debug. There are no mount options.
Mount options for devpts
The devpts filesystem is a pseudo filesystem, traditionally mounted on /dev/pts. In order to acquire a pseudo terminal, a
process opens /dev/ptmx; the number of the pseudo terminal is then made available to the process and the pseudo terminal
slave can be accessed as /dev/pts/.
uid=value and gid=value
This sets the owner or the group of newly created PTYs to the specified values. When nothing is specified, they will
be set to the UID and GID of the creating process. For example, if there is a tty group with GID 5, then gid=5 will
cause newly created PTYs to belong to the tty group.
mode=value
Set the mode of newly created PTYs to the specified value. The default is 0600. A value of mode=620 and gid=5
makes "mesg y" the default on newly created PTYs.
newinstance
Create a private instance of devpts filesystem, such that indices of ptys allocated in this new instance are inde‐
pendent of indices created in other instances of devpts.
All mounts of devpts without this newinstance option share the same set of pty indices (i.e legacy mode). Each
mount of devpts with the newinstance option has a private set of pty indices.
This option is mainly used to support containers in the linux kernel. It is implemented in linux kernel versions
starting with 2.6.29. Further, this mount option is valid only if CONFIG_DEVPTS_MULTIPLE_INSTANCES is enabled in
the kernel configuration.
To use this option effectively, /dev/ptmx must be a symbolic link to pts/ptmx. See Documentation/filesys‐
tems/devpts.txt in the linux kernel source tree for details.
ptmxmode=value
Set the mode for the new ptmx device node in the devpts filesystem.
With the support for multiple instances of devpts (see newinstance option above), each instance has a private ptmx
node in the root of the devpts filesystem (typically /dev/pts/ptmx).
For compatibility with older versions of the kernel, the default mode of the new ptmx node is 0000. ptmxmode=value
specifies a more useful mode for the ptmx node and is highly recommended when the newinstance option is specified.
This option is only implemented in linux kernel versions starting with 2.6.29. Further this option is valid only if
CONFIG_DEVPTS_MULTIPLE_INSTANCES is enabled in the kernel configuration.
Mount options for ext
None. Note that the `ext' filesystem is obsolete. Don't use it. Since Linux version 2.1.21 extfs is no longer part of the
kernel source.
Mount options for ext2
The `ext2' filesystem is the standard Linux filesystem. Since Linux 2.5.46, for most mount options the default is deter‐
mined by the filesystem superblock. Set them with tune2fs(8).
acl|noacl
Support POSIX Access Control Lists (or not).
bsddf|minixdf
Set the behaviour for the statfs system call. The minixdf behaviour is to return in the f_blocks field the total
number of blocks of the filesystem, while the bsddf behaviour (which is the default) is to subtract the overhead
blocks used by the ext2 filesystem and not available for file storage. Thus
% mount /k -o minixdf; df /k; umount /k
Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sda6 2630655 86954 2412169 3% /k
% mount /k -o bsddf; df /k; umount /k
Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sda6 2543714 13 2412169 0% /k
(Note that this example shows that one can add command line options to the options given in /etc/fstab.)
check={none|nocheck}
No checking is done at mount time. This is the default. This is fast. It is wise to invoke e2fsck(8) every now and
then, e.g. at boot time.
debug Print debugging info upon each (re)mount.
errors={continue|remount-ro|panic}
Define the behaviour when an error is encountered. (Either ignore errors and just mark the filesystem erroneous and
continue, or remount the filesystem read-only, or panic and halt the system.) The default is set in the filesystem
superblock, and can be changed using tune2fs(8).
grpid|bsdgroups and nogrpid|sysvgroups
These options define what group id a newly created file gets. When grpid is set, it takes the group id of the
directory in which it is created; otherwise (the default) it takes the fsgid of the current process, unless the
directory has the setgid bit set, in which case it takes the gid from the parent directory, and also gets the setgid
bit set if it is a directory itself.
grpquota|noquota|quota|usrquota
These options are accepted but ignored.
nouid32
Disables 32-bit UIDs and GIDs. This is for interoperability with older kernels which only store and expect 16-bit
values.
oldalloc or orlov
Use old allocator or Orlov allocator for new inodes. Orlov is default.
resgid=n and resuid=n
The ext2 filesystem reserves a certain percentage of the available space (by default 5%, see mke2fs(8) and
tune2fs(8)). These options determine who can use the reserved blocks. (Roughly: whoever has the specified uid, or
belongs to the specified group.)
sb=n Instead of block 1, use block n as superblock. This could be useful when the filesystem has been damaged. (Earlier,
copies of the superblock would be made every 8192 blocks: in block 1, 8193, 16385, ... (and one got thousands of
copies on a big filesystem). Since version 1.08, mke2fs has a -s (sparse superblock) option to reduce the number of
backup superblocks, and since version 1.15 this is the default. Note that this may mean that ext2 filesystems cre‐
ated by a recent mke2fs cannot be mounted r/w under Linux 2.0.*.) The block number here uses 1k units. Thus, if you
want to use logical block 32768 on a filesystem with 4k blocks, use "sb=131072".
user_xattr|nouser_xattr
Support "user." extended attributes (or not).
Mount options for ext3
The ext3 filesystem is a version of the ext2 filesystem which has been enhanced with journalling. It supports the same
options as ext2 as well as the following additions:
journal=update
Update the ext3 filesystem's journal to the current format.
journal=inum
When a journal already exists, this option is ignored. Otherwise, it specifies the number of the inode which will
represent the ext3 filesystem's journal file; ext3 will create a new journal, overwriting the old contents of the
file whose inode number is inum.
journal_dev=devnum
When the external journal device's major/minor numbers have changed, this option allows the user to specify the new
journal location. The journal device is identified through its new major/minor numbers encoded in devnum.
norecovery/noload
Don't load the journal on mounting. Note that if the filesystem was not unmounted cleanly, skipping the journal
replay will lead to the filesystem containing inconsistencies that can lead to any number of problems.
data={journal|ordered|writeback}
Specifies the journalling mode for file data. Metadata is always journaled. To use modes other than ordered on the
root filesystem, pass the mode to the kernel as boot parameter, e.g. rootflags=data=journal.
journal
All data is committed into the journal prior to being written into the main filesystem.
ordered
This is the default mode. All data is forced directly out to the main file system prior to its metadata
being committed to the journal.
writeback
Data ordering is not preserved - data may be written into the main filesystem after its metadata has been
committed to the journal. This is rumoured to be the highest-throughput option. It guarantees internal
filesystem integrity, however it can allow old data to appear in files after a crash and journal recovery.
barrier=0 / barrier=1
This enables/disables barriers. barrier=0 disables it, barrier=1 enables it. Write barriers enforce proper on-disk
ordering of journal commits, making volatile disk write caches safe to use, at some performance penalty. The ext3
filesystem does not enable write barriers by default. Be sure to enable barriers unless your disks are battery-
backed one way or another. Otherwise you risk filesystem corruption in case of power failure.
commit=nrsec
Sync all data and metadata every nrsec seconds. The default value is 5 seconds. Zero means default.
user_xattr
Enable Extended User Attributes. See the attr(5) manual page.
acl Enable POSIX Access Control Lists. See the acl(5) manual page.
Mount options for ext4
The ext4 filesystem is an advanced level of the ext3 filesystem which incorporates scalability and reliability enhancements
for supporting large filesystem.
The options journal_dev, noload, data, commit, orlov, oldalloc, [no]user_xattr [no]acl, bsddf, minixdf, debug, errors,
data_err, grpid, bsdgroups, nogrpid sysvgroups, resgid, resuid, sb, quota, noquota, grpquota and usrquota are backwardly
compatible with ext3 or ext2.
journal_checksum
Enable checksumming of the journal transactions. This will allow the recovery code in e2fsck and the kernel to
detect corruption in the kernel. It is a compatible change and will be ignored by older kernels.
journal_async_commit
Commit block can be written to disk without waiting for descriptor blocks. If enabled older kernels cannot mount the
device. This will enable 'journal_checksum' internally.
journal=update
Update the ext4 filesystem's journal to the current format.
barrier=0 / barrier=1 / barrier / nobarrier
This enables/disables the use of write barriers in the jbd code. barrier=0 disables, barrier=1 enables. This also
requires an IO stack which can support barriers, and if jbd gets an error on a barrier write, it will disable again
with a warning. Write barriers enforce proper on-disk ordering of journal commits, making volatile disk write
caches safe to use, at some performance penalty. If your disks are battery-backed in one way or another, disabling
barriers may safely improve performance. The mount options "barrier" and "nobarrier" can also be used to enable or
disable barriers, for consistency with other ext4 mount options.
The ext4 filesystem enables write barriers by default.
inode_readahead=n
This tuning parameter controls the maximum number of inode table blocks that ext4's inode table readahead algorithm
will pre-read into the buffer cache. The default value is 32 blocks.
stripe=n
Number of filesystem blocks that mballoc will try to use for allocation size and alignment. For RAID5/6 systems this
should be the number of data disks * RAID chunk size in filesystem blocks.
delalloc
Deferring block allocation until write-out time.
nodelalloc
Disable delayed allocation. Blocks are allocated when data is copied from user to page cache.
max_batch_time=usec
Maximum amount of time ext4 should wait for additional filesystem operations to be batch together with a synchronous
write operation. Since a synchronous write operation is going to force a commit and then a wait for the I/O com‐
plete, it doesn't cost much, and can be a huge throughput win, we wait for a small amount of time to see if any
other transactions can piggyback on the synchronous write. The algorithm used is designed to automatically tune for
the speed of the disk, by measuring the amount of time (on average) that it takes to finish committing a transac‐
tion. Call this time the "commit time". If the time that the transaction has been running is less than the commit
time, ext4 will try sleeping for the commit time to see if other operations will join the transaction. The commit
time is capped by the max_batch_time, which defaults to 15000us (15ms). This optimization can be turned off entirely
by setting max_batch_time to 0.
min_batch_time=usec
This parameter sets the commit time (as described above) to be at least min_batch_time. It defaults to zero
microseconds. Increasing this parameter may improve the throughput of multi-threaded, synchronous workloads on very
fast disks, at the cost of increasing latency.
journal_ioprio=prio
The I/O priority (from 0 to 7, where 0 is the highest priorty) which should be used for I/O operations submitted by
kjournald2 during a commit operation. This defaults to 3, which is a slightly higher priority than the default I/O
priority.
abort Simulate the effects of calling ext4_abort() for debugging purposes. This is normally used while remounting a
filesystem which is already mounted.
auto_da_alloc|noauto_da_alloc
Many broken applications don't use fsync() when replacing existing files via patterns such as
fd = open("foo.new")/write(fd,..)/close(fd)/ rename("foo.new", "foo")
or worse yet
fd = open("foo", O_TRUNC)/write(fd,..)/close(fd).
If auto_da_alloc is enabled, ext4 will detect the replace-via-rename and replace-via-truncate patterns and force
that any delayed allocation blocks are allocated such that at the next journal commit, in the default data=ordered
mode, the data blocks of the new file are forced to disk before the rename() operation is committed. This provides
roughly the same level of guarantees as ext3, and avoids the "zero-length" problem that can happen when a system
crashes before the delayed allocation blocks are forced to disk.
discard/nodiscard
Controls whether ext4 should issue discard/TRIM commands to the underlying block device when blocks are freed. This
is useful for SSD devices and sparse/thinly-provisioned LUNs, but it is off by default until sufficient testing has
been done.
nouid32
Disables 32-bit UIDs and GIDs. This is for interoperability with older kernels which only store and expect 16-bit
values.
resize Allows to resize filesystem to the end of the last existing block group, further resize has to be done with
resize2fs either online, or offline. It can be used only with conjunction with remount.
block_validity/noblock_validity
This options allows to enables/disables the in-kernel facility for tracking filesystem metadata blocks within inter‐
nal data structures. This allows multi- block allocator and other routines to quickly locate extents which might
overlap with filesystem metadata blocks. This option is intended for debugging purposes and since it negatively
affects the performance, it is off by default.
dioread_lock/dioread_nolock
Controls whether or not ext4 should use the DIO read locking. If the dioread_nolock option is specified ext4 will
allocate uninitialized extent before buffer write and convert the extent to initialized after IO completes. This
approach allows ext4 code to avoid using inode mutex, which improves scalability on high speed storages. However
this does not work with data journaling and dioread_nolock option will be ignored with kernel warning. Note that
dioread_nolock code path is only used for extent-based files. Because of the restrictions this options comprises it
is off by default (e.g. dioread_lock).
i_version
Enable 64-bit inode version support. This option is off by default.
Mount options for fat
(Note: fat is not a separate filesystem, but a common part of the msdos, umsdos and vfat filesystems.)
blocksize={512|1024|2048}
Set blocksize (default 512). This option is obsolete.
uid=value and gid=value
Set the owner and group of all files. (Default: the uid and gid of the current process.)
umask=value
Set the umask (the bitmask of the permissions that are not present). The default is the umask of the current
process. The value is given in octal.
dmask=value
Set the umask applied to directories only. The default is the umask of the current process. The value is given in
octal.
fmask=value
Set the umask applied to regular files only. The default is the umask of the current process. The value is given
in octal.
allow_utime=value
This option controls the permission check of mtime/atime.
20 If current process is in group of file's group ID, you can change timestamp.
2 Other users can change timestamp.
The default is set from `dmask' option. (If the directory is writable, utime(2) is also allowed. I.e. ~dmask & 022)
Normally utime(2) checks current process is owner of the file, or it has CAP_FOWNER capability. But FAT filesystem
doesn't have uid/gid on disk, so normal check is too unflexible. With this option you can relax it.
check=value
Three different levels of pickyness can be chosen:
r[elaxed]
Upper and lower case are accepted and equivalent, long name parts are truncated (e.g. verylongname.foobar
becomes verylong.foo), leading and embedded spaces are accepted in each name part (name and extension).
n[ormal]
Like "relaxed", but many special characters (*, ?, <, spaces, etc.) are rejected. This is the default.
s[trict]
Like "normal", but names may not contain long parts and special characters that are sometimes used on Linux,
but are not accepted by MS-DOS are rejected. (+, =, spaces, etc.)
codepage=value
Sets the codepage for converting to shortname characters on FAT and VFAT filesystems. By default, codepage 437 is
used.
conv={b[inary]|t[ext]|a[uto]}
The fat filesystem can perform CRLF<-->NL (MS-DOS text format to UNIX text format) conversion in the kernel. The
following conversion modes are available:
binary no translation is performed. This is the default.
text CRLF<-->NL translation is performed on all files.
auto CRLF<-->NL translation is performed on all files that don't have a "well-known binary" extension. The list of
known extensions can be found at the beginning of fs/fat/misc.c (as of 2.0, the list is: exe, com, bin, app,
sys, drv, ovl, ovr, obj, lib, dll, pif, arc, zip, lha, lzh, zoo, tar, z, arj, tz, taz, tzp, tpz, gz, tgz,
deb, gif, bmp, tif, gl, jpg, pcx, tfm, vf, gf, pk, pxl, dvi).
Programs that do computed lseeks won't like in-kernel text conversion. Several people have had their data ruined by
this translation. Beware!
For filesystems mounted in binary mode, a conversion tool (fromdos/todos) is available. This option is obsolete.
cvf_format=module
Forces the driver to use the CVF (Compressed Volume File) module cvf_module instead of auto-detection. If the kernel
supports kmod, the cvf_format=xxx option also controls on-demand CVF module loading. This option is obsolete.
cvf_option=option
Option passed to the CVF module. This option is obsolete.
debug Turn on the debug flag. A version string and a list of filesystem parameters will be printed (these data are also
printed if the parameters appear to be inconsistent).
fat={12|16|32}
Specify a 12, 16 or 32 bit fat. This overrides the automatic FAT type detection routine. Use with caution!
iocharset=value
Character set to use for converting between 8 bit characters and 16 bit Unicode characters. The default is
iso8859-1. Long filenames are stored on disk in Unicode format.
tz=UTC This option disables the conversion of timestamps between local time (as used by Windows on FAT) and UTC (which
Linux uses internally). This is particularly useful when mounting devices (like digital cameras) that are set to
UTC in order to avoid the pitfalls of local time.
quiet Turn on the quiet flag. Attempts to chown or chmod files do not return errors, although they fail. Use with cau‐
tion!
showexec
If set, the execute permission bits of the file will be allowed only if the extension part of the name is .EXE,
.COM, or .BAT. Not set by default.
sys_immutable
If set, ATTR_SYS attribute on FAT is handled as IMMUTABLE flag on Linux. Not set by default.
flush If set, the filesystem will try to flush to disk more early than normal. Not set by default.
usefree
Use the "free clusters" value stored on FSINFO. It'll be used to determine number of free clusters without scanning
disk. But it's not used by default, because recent Windows don't update it correctly in some case. If you are sure
the "free clusters" on FSINFO is correct, by this option you can avoid scanning disk.
dots, nodots, dotsOK=[yes|no]
Various misguided attempts to force Unix or DOS conventions onto a FAT filesystem.
Mount options for hfs
creator=cccc, type=cccc
Set the creator/type values as shown by the MacOS finder used for creating new files. Default values: '????'.
uid=n, gid=n
Set the owner and group of all files. (Default: the uid and gid of the current process.)
dir_umask=n, file_umask=n, umask=n
Set the umask used for all directories, all regular files, or all files and directories. Defaults to the umask of
the current process.
session=n
Select the CDROM session to mount. Defaults to leaving that decision to the CDROM driver. This option will fail
with anything but a CDROM as underlying device.
part=n Select partition number n from the device. Only makes sense for CDROMs. Defaults to not parsing the partition ta‐
ble at all.
quiet Don't complain about invalid mount options.
Mount options for hpfs
uid=value and gid=value
Set the owner and group of all files. (Default: the uid and gid of the current process.)
umask=value
Set the umask (the bitmask of the permissions that are not present). The default is the umask of the current
process. The value is given in octal.
case={lower|asis}
Convert all files names to lower case, or leave them. (Default: case=lower.)
conv={binary|text|auto}
For conv=text, delete some random CRs (in particular, all followed by NL) when reading a file. For conv=auto,
choose more or less at random between conv=binary and conv=text. For conv=binary, just read what is in the file.
This is the default.
nocheck
Do not abort mounting when certain consistency checks fail.
Mount options for iso9660
ISO 9660 is a standard describing a filesystem structure to be used on CD-ROMs. (This filesystem type is also seen on some
DVDs. See also the udf filesystem.)
Normal iso9660 filenames appear in a 8.3 format (i.e., DOS-like restrictions on filename length), and in addition all char‐
acters are in upper case. Also there is no field for file ownership, protection, number of links, provision for
block/character devices, etc.
Rock Ridge is an extension to iso9660 that provides all of these UNIX-like features. Basically there are extensions to
each directory record that supply all of the additional information, and when Rock Ridge is in use, the filesystem is
indistinguishable from a normal UNIX filesystem (except that it is read-only, of course).
norock Disable the use of Rock Ridge extensions, even if available. Cf. map.
nojoliet
Disable the use of Microsoft Joliet extensions, even if available. Cf. map.
check={r[elaxed]|s[trict]}
With check=relaxed, a filename is first converted to lower case before doing the lookup. This is probably only
meaningful together with norock and map=normal. (Default: check=strict.)
uid=value and gid=value
Give all files in the filesystem the indicated user or group id, possibly overriding the information found in the
Rock Ridge extensions. (Default: uid=0,gid=0.)
map={n[ormal]|o[ff]|a[corn]}
For non-Rock Ridge volumes, normal name translation maps upper to lower case ASCII, drops a trailing `;1', and con‐
verts `;' to `.'. With map=off no name translation is done. See norock. (Default: map=normal.) map=acorn is like
map=normal but also apply Acorn extensions if present.
mode=value
For non-Rock Ridge volumes, give all files the indicated mode. (Default: read permission for everybody.) Since
Linux 2.1.37 one no longer needs to specify the mode in decimal. (Octal is indicated by a leading 0.)
unhide Also show hidden and associated files. (If the ordinary files and the associated or hidden files have the same
filenames, this may make the ordinary files inaccessible.)
block={512|1024|2048}
Set the block size to the indicated value. (Default: block=1024.)
conv={a[uto]|b[inary]|m[text]|t[ext]}
(Default: conv=binary.) Since Linux 1.3.54 this option has no effect anymore. (And non-binary settings used to be
very dangerous, possibly leading to silent data corruption.)
cruft If the high byte of the file length contains other garbage, set this mount option to ignore the high order bits of
the file length. This implies that a file cannot be larger than 16MB.
session=x
Select number of session on multisession CD. (Since 2.3.4.)
sbsector=xxx
Session begins from sector xxx. (Since 2.3.4.)
The following options are the same as for vfat and specifying them only makes sense when using discs encoded using Micro‐
soft's Joliet extensions.
iocharset=value
Character set to use for converting 16 bit Unicode characters on CD to 8 bit characters. The default is iso8859-1.
utf8 Convert 16 bit Unicode characters on CD to UTF-8.
Mount options for jfs
iocharset=name
Character set to use for converting from Unicode to ASCII. The default is to do no conversion. Use iocharset=utf8
for UTF8 translations. This requires CONFIG_NLS_UTF8 to be set in the kernel .config file.
resize=value
Resize the volume to value blocks. JFS only supports growing a volume, not shrinking it. This option is only valid
during a remount, when the volume is mounted read-write. The resize keyword with no value will grow the volume to
the full size of the partition.
nointegrity
Do not write to the journal. The primary use of this option is to allow for higher performance when restoring a
volume from backup media. The integrity of the volume is not guaranteed if the system abnormally abends.
integrity
Default. Commit metadata changes to the journal. Use this option to remount a volume where the nointegrity option
was previously specified in order to restore normal behavior.
errors={continue|remount-ro|panic}
Define the behaviour when an error is encountered. (Either ignore errors and just mark the filesystem erroneous and
continue, or remount the filesystem read-only, or panic and halt the system.)
noquota|quota|usrquota|grpquota
These options are accepted but ignored.
Mount options for minix
None.
Mount options for msdos
See mount options for fat. If the msdos filesystem detects an inconsistency, it reports an error and sets the file system
read-only. The filesystem can be made writable again by remounting it.
Mount options for ncpfs
Just like nfs, the ncpfs implementation expects a binary argument (a struct ncp_mount_data) to the mount system call. This
argument is constructed by ncpmount(8) and the current version of mount (2.12) does not know anything about ncpfs.
Mount options for nfs and nfs4
See the options section of the nfs(5) man page (nfs-common package must be installed).
The nfs and nfs4 implementation expects a binary argument (a struct nfs_mount_data) to the mount system call. This argument
is constructed by mount.nfs(8) and the current version of mount (2.13) does not know anything about nfs and nfs4.
Mount options for ntfs
iocharset=name
Character set to use when returning file names. Unlike VFAT, NTFS suppresses names that contain nonconvertible
characters. Deprecated.
nls=name
New name for the option earlier called iocharset.
utf8 Use UTF-8 for converting file names.
uni_xlate={0|1|2}
For 0 (or `no' or `false'), do not use escape sequences for unknown Unicode characters. For 1 (or `yes' or `true')
or 2, use vfat-style 4-byte escape sequences starting with ":". Here 2 give a little-endian encoding and 1 a
byteswapped bigendian encoding.
posix=[0|1]
If enabled (posix=1), the filesystem distinguishes between upper and lower case. The 8.3 alias names are presented
as hard links instead of being suppressed. This option is obsolete.
uid=value, gid=value and umask=value
Set the file permission on the filesystem. The umask value is given in octal. By default, the files are owned by
root and not readable by somebody else.
Mount options for proc
uid=value and gid=value
These options are recognized, but have no effect as far as I can see.
Mount options for ramfs
Ramfs is a memory based filesystem. Mount it and you have it. Unmount it and it is gone. Present since Linux 2.3.99pre4.
There are no mount options.
Mount options for reiserfs
Reiserfs is a journaling filesystem.
conv Instructs version 3.6 reiserfs software to mount a version 3.5 filesystem, using the 3.6 format for newly created
objects. This filesystem will no longer be compatible with reiserfs 3.5 tools.
hash={rupasov|tea|r5|detect}
Choose which hash function reiserfs will use to find files within directories.
rupasov
A hash invented by Yury Yu. Rupasov. It is fast and preserves locality, mapping lexicographically close file
names to close hash values. This option should not be used, as it causes a high probability of hash colli‐
sions.
tea A Davis-Meyer function implemented by Jeremy Fitzhardinge. It uses hash permuting bits in the name. It gets
high randomness and, therefore, low probability of hash collisions at some CPU cost. This may be used if
EHASHCOLLISION errors are experienced with the r5 hash.
r5 A modified version of the rupasov hash. It is used by default and is the best choice unless the filesystem
has huge directories and unusual file-name patterns.
detect Instructs mount to detect which hash function is in use by examining the filesystem being mounted, and to
write this information into the reiserfs superblock. This is only useful on the first mount of an old format
filesystem.
hashed_relocation
Tunes the block allocator. This may provide performance improvements in some situations.
no_unhashed_relocation
Tunes the block allocator. This may provide performance improvements in some situations.
noborder
Disable the border allocator algorithm invented by Yury Yu. Rupasov. This may provide performance improvements in
some situations.
nolog Disable journalling. This will provide slight performance improvements in some situations at the cost of losing
reiserfs's fast recovery from crashes. Even with this option turned on, reiserfs still performs all journalling
operations, save for actual writes into its journalling area. Implementation of nolog is a work in progress.
notail By default, reiserfs stores small files and `file tails' directly into its tree. This confuses some utilities such
as LILO(8). This option is used to disable packing of files into the tree.
replayonly
Replay the transactions which are in the journal, but do not actually mount the filesystem. Mainly used by reiserf‐
sck.
resize=number
A remount option which permits online expansion of reiserfs partitions. Instructs reiserfs to assume that the
device has number blocks. This option is designed for use with devices which are under logical volume management
(LVM). There is a special resizer utility which can be obtained from ftp://ftp.namesys.com/pub/reiserfsprogs.
user_xattr
Enable Extended User Attributes. See the attr(5) manual page.
acl Enable POSIX Access Control Lists. See the acl(5) manual page.
barrier=none / barrier=flush
This enables/disables the use of write barriers in the journaling code. barrier=none disables it, barrier=flush
enables it. Write barriers enforce proper on-disk ordering of journal commits, making volatile disk write caches
safe to use, at some performance penalty. The reiserfs filesystem does not enable write barriers by default. Be sure
to enable barriers unless your disks are battery-backed one way or another. Otherwise you risk filesystem corruption
in case of power failure.
Mount options for romfs
None.
Mount options for squashfs
None.
Mount options for smbfs
Just like nfs, the smbfs implementation expects a binary argument (a struct smb_mount_data) to the mount system call. This
argument is constructed by smbmount(8) and the current version of mount (2.12) does not know anything about smbfs.
Mount options for sysv
None.
Mount options for tmpfs
size=nbytes
Override default maximum size of the filesystem. The size is given in bytes, and rounded up to entire pages. The
default is half of the memory. The size parameter also accepts a suffix % to limit this tmpfs instance to that per‐
centage of your physical RAM: the default, when neither size nor nr_blocks is specified, is size=50%
nr_blocks=
The same as size, but in blocks of PAGE_CACHE_SIZE
nr_inodes=
The maximum number of inodes for this instance. The default is half of the number of your physical RAM pages, or (on
a machine with highmem) the number of lowmem RAM pages, whichever is the lower.
The tmpfs mount options for sizing ( size, nr_blocks, and nr_inodes) accept a suffix k, m or g for Ki, Mi, Gi (binary kilo,
mega and giga) and can be changed on remount.
mode= Set initial permissions of the root directory.
uid= The user id.
gid= The group id.
mpol=[default|prefer:Node|bind:NodeList|interleave|interleave:NodeList]
Set the NUMA memory allocation policy for all files in that instance (if the kernel CONFIG_NUMA is enabled) - which
can be adjusted on the fly via 'mount -o remount ...'
default
prefers to allocate memory from the local node
prefer:Node
prefers to allocate memory from the given Node
bind:NodeList
allocates memory only from nodes in NodeList
interleave
prefers to allocate from each node in turn
interleave:NodeList
allocates from each node of NodeList in turn.
The NodeList format is a comma-separated list of decimal numbers and ranges, a range being two hyphen-separated dec‐
imal numbers, the smallest and largest node numbers in the range. For example, mpol=bind:0-3,5,7,9-15
Note that trying to mount a tmpfs with an mpol option will fail if the running kernel does not support NUMA; and
will fail if its nodelist specifies a node which is not online. If your system relies on that tmpfs being mounted,
but from time to time runs a kernel built without NUMA capability (perhaps a safe recovery kernel), or with fewer
nodes online, then it is advisable to omit the mpol option from automatic mount options. It can be added later,
when the tmpfs is already mounted on MountPoint, by 'mount -o remount,mpol=Policy:NodeList MountPoint'.
Mount options for ubifs
UBIFS is a flash file system which works on top of UBI volumes. Note that atime is not supported and is always turned off.
The device name may be specified as
ubiX_Y UBI device number X, volume number Y
ubiY UBI device number 0, volume number Y
ubiX:NAME
UBI device number X, volume with name NAME
ubi:NAME
UBI device number 0, volume with name NAME
Alternative ! separator may be used instead of :.
The following mount options are available:
bulk_read
Enable bulk-read. VFS read-ahead is disabled because it slows down the file system. Bulk-Read is an internal opti‐
mization. Some flashes may read faster if the data are read at one go, rather than at several read requests. For
example, OneNAND can do "read-while-load" if it reads more than one NAND page.
no_bulk_read
Do not bulk-read. This is the default.
chk_data_crc
Check data CRC-32 checksums. This is the default.
no_chk_data_crc.
Do not check data CRC-32 checksums. With this option, the filesystem does not check CRC-32 checksum for data, but it
does check it for the internal indexing information. This option only affects reading, not writing. CRC-32 is always
calculated when writing the data.
compr={none|lzo|zlib}
Select the default compressor which is used when new files are written. It is still possible to read compressed
files if mounted with the none option.
Mount options for udf
udf is the "Universal Disk Format" filesystem defined by the Optical Storage Technology Association, and is often used for
DVD-ROM. See also iso9660.
gid= Set the default group.
umask= Set the default umask. The value is given in octal.
uid= Set the default user.
unhide Show otherwise hidden files.
undelete
Show deleted files in lists.
nostrict
Unset strict conformance.
iocharset
Set the NLS character set.
bs= Set the block size. (May not work unless 2048.)
novrs Skip volume sequence recognition.
session=
Set the CDROM session counting from 0. Default: last session.
anchor=
Override standard anchor location. Default: 256.
volume=
Override the VolumeDesc location. (unused)
partition=
Override the PartitionDesc location. (unused)
lastblock=
Set the last block of the filesystem.
fileset=
Override the fileset block location. (unused)
rootdir=
Override the root directory location. (unused)
Mount options for ufs
ufstype=value
UFS is a filesystem widely used in different operating systems. The problem are differences among implementations.
Features of some implementations are undocumented, so its hard to recognize the type of ufs automatically. That's
why the user must specify the type of ufs by mount option. Possible values are:
old Old format of ufs, this is the default, read only. (Don't forget to give the -r option.)
44bsd For filesystems created by a BSD-like system (NetBSD,FreeBSD,OpenBSD).
ufs2 Used in FreeBSD 5.x supported as read-write.
5xbsd Synonym for ufs2.
sun For filesystems created by SunOS or Solaris on Sparc.
sunx86 For filesystems created by Solaris on x86.
hp For filesystems created by HP-UX, read-only.
nextstep
For filesystems created by NeXTStep (on NeXT station) (currently read only).
nextstep-cd
For NextStep CDROMs (block_size == 2048), read-only.
openstep
For filesystems created by OpenStep (currently read only). The same filesystem type is also used by Mac OS
X.
onerror=value
Set behaviour on error:
panic If an error is encountered, cause a kernel panic.
[lock|umount|repair]
These mount options don't do anything at present; when an error is encountered only a console message is
printed.
Mount options for umsdos
See mount options for msdos. The dotsOK option is explicitly killed by umsdos.
Mount options for vfat
First of all, the mount options for fat are recognized. The dotsOK option is explicitly killed by vfat. Furthermore,
there are
uni_xlate
Translate unhandled Unicode characters to special escaped sequences. This lets you backup and restore filenames
that are created with any Unicode characters. Without this option, a '?' is used when no translation is possible.
The escape character is ':' because it is otherwise illegal on the vfat filesystem. The escape sequence that gets
used, where u is the unicode character, is: ':', (u & 0x3f), ((u>>6) & 0x3f), (u>>12).
posix Allow two files with names that only differ in case. This option is obsolete.
nonumtail
First try to make a short name without sequence number, before trying name~num.ext.
utf8 UTF8 is the filesystem safe 8-bit encoding of Unicode that is used by the console. It can be enabled for the
filesystem with this option or disabled with utf8=0, utf8=no or utf8=false. If `uni_xlate' gets set, UTF8 gets dis‐
abled.
shortname={lower|win95|winnt|mixed}
Defines the behaviour for creation and display of filenames which fit into 8.3 characters. If a long name for a file
exists, it will always be preferred display. There are four modes: :
lower Force the short name to lower case upon display; store a long name when the short name is not all upper case.
win95 Force the short name to upper case upon display; store a long name when the short name is not all upper case.
winnt Display the shortname as is; store a long name when the short name is not all lower case or all upper case.
mixed Display the short name as is; store a long name when the short name is not all upper case. This mode is the
default since Linux 2.6.32.
Mount options for usbfs
devuid=uid and devgid=gid and devmode=mode
Set the owner and group and mode of the device files in the usbfs filesystem (default: uid=gid=0, mode=0644). The
mode is given in octal.
busuid=uid and busgid=gid and busmode=mode
Set the owner and group and mode of the bus directories in the usbfs filesystem (default: uid=gid=0, mode=0555). The
mode is given in octal.
listuid=uid and listgid=gid and listmode=mode
Set the owner and group and mode of the file devices (default: uid=gid=0, mode=0444). The mode is given in octal.
Mount options for xenix
None.
Mount options for xfs
allocsize=size
Sets the buffered I/O end-of-file preallocation size when doing delayed allocation writeout (default size is 64KiB).
Valid values for this option are page size (typically 4KiB) through to 1GiB, inclusive, in power-of-2 increments.
attr2|noattr2
The options enable/disable (default is enabled) an "opportunistic" improvement to be made in the way inline extended
attributes are stored on-disk. When the new form is used for the first time (by setting or removing extended
attributes) the on-disk superblock feature bit field will be updated to reflect this format being in use.
barrier
Enables the use of block layer write barriers for writes into the journal and unwritten extent conversion. This
allows for drive level write caching to be enabled, for devices that support write barriers.
dmapi Enable the DMAPI (Data Management API) event callouts. Use with the mtpt option.
grpid|bsdgroups and nogrpid|sysvgroups
These options define what group ID a newly created file gets. When grpid is set, it takes the group ID of the
directory in which it is created; otherwise (the default) it takes the fsgid of the current process, unless the
directory has the setgid bit set, in which case it takes the gid from the parent directory, and also gets the setgid
bit set if it is a directory itself.
ihashsize=value
Sets the number of hash buckets available for hashing the in-memory inodes of the specified mount point. If a value
of zero is used, the value selected by the default algorithm will be displayed in /proc/mounts.
ikeep|noikeep
When inode clusters are emptied of inodes, keep them around on the disk (ikeep) - this is the traditional XFS behav‐
iour and is still the default for now. Using the noikeep option, inode clusters are returned to the free space
pool.
inode64
Indicates that XFS is allowed to create inodes at any location in the filesystem, including those which will result
in inode numbers occupying more than 32 bits of significance. This is provided for backwards compatibility, but
causes problems for backup applications that cannot handle large inode numbers.
largeio|nolargeio
If nolargeio is specified, the optimal I/O reported in st_blksize by stat(2) will be as small as possible to allow
user applications to avoid inefficient read/modify/write I/O. If largeio is specified, a filesystem that has a
swidth specified will return the swidth value (in bytes) in st_blksize. If the filesystem does not have a swidth
specified but does specify an allocsize then allocsize (in bytes) will be returned instead. If neither of these two
options are specified, then filesystem will behave as if nolargeio was specified.
logbufs=value
Set the number of in-memory log buffers. Valid numbers range from 2-8 inclusive. The default value is 8 buffers
for any recent kernel.
logbsize=value
Set the size of each in-memory log buffer. Size may be specified in bytes, or in kilobytes with a "k" suffix.
Valid sizes for version 1 and version 2 logs are 16384 (16k) and 32768 (32k). Valid sizes for version 2 logs also
include 65536 (64k), 131072 (128k) and 262144 (256k). The default value for any recent kernel is 32768.
logdev=device and rtdev=device
Use an external log (metadata journal) and/or real-time device. An XFS filesystem has up to three parts: a data
section, a log section, and a real-time section. The real-time section is optional, and the log section can be sep‐
arate from the data section or contained within it. Refer to xfs(5).
mtpt=mountpoint
Use with the dmapi option. The value specified here will be included in the DMAPI mount event, and should be the
path of the actual mountpoint that is used.
noalign
Data allocations will not be aligned at stripe unit boundaries.
noatime
Access timestamps are not updated when a file is read.
norecovery
The filesystem will be mounted without running log recovery. If the filesystem was not cleanly unmounted, it is
likely to be inconsistent when mounted in norecovery mode. Some files or directories may not be accessible because
of this. Filesystems mounted norecovery must be mounted read-only or the mount will fail.
nouuid Don't check for double mounted filesystems using the filesystem uuid. This is useful to mount LVM snapshot volumes.
osyncisosync
Make O_SYNC writes implement true O_SYNC. WITHOUT this option, Linux XFS behaves as if an osyncisdsync option is
used, which will make writes to files opened with the O_SYNC flag set behave as if the O_DSYNC flag had been used
instead. This can result in better performance without compromising data safety. However if this option is not in
effect, timestamp updates from O_SYNC writes can be lost if the system crashes. If timestamp updates are critical,
use the osyncisosync option.
uquota|usrquota|uqnoenforce|quota
User disk quota accounting enabled, and limits (optionally) enforced. Refer to xfs_quota(8) for further details.
gquota|grpquota|gqnoenforce
Group disk quota accounting enabled and limits (optionally) enforced. Refer to xfs_quota(8) for further details.
pquota|prjquota|pqnoenforce
Project disk quota accounting enabled and limits (optionally) enforced. Refer to xfs_quota(8) for further details.
sunit=value and swidth=value
Used to specify the stripe unit and width for a RAID device or a stripe volume. value must be specified in 512-byte
block units. If this option is not specified and the filesystem was made on a stripe volume or the stripe width or
unit were specified for the RAID device at mkfs time, then the mount system call will restore the value from the
superblock. For filesystems that are made directly on RAID devices, these options can be used to override the
information in the superblock if the underlying disk layout changes after the filesystem has been created. The
swidth option is required if the sunit option has been specified, and must be a multiple of the sunit value.
swalloc
Data allocations will be rounded up to stripe width boundaries when the current end of file is being extended and
the file size is larger than the stripe width size.
Mount options for xiafs
None. Although nothing is wrong with xiafs, it is not used much, and is not maintained. Probably one shouldn't use it.
Since Linux version 2.1.21 xiafs is no longer part of the kernel source.
THE LOOP DEVICE
One further possible type is a mount via the loop device. For example, the command
mount /tmp/disk.img /mnt -t vfat -o loop=/dev/loop
will set up the loop device /dev/loop3 to correspond to the file /tmp/disk.img, and then mount this device on /mnt.
If no explicit loop device is mentioned (but just an option `-o loop' is given), then mount will try to find some unused
loop device and use that, for example
mount /tmp/disk.img /mnt -o loop
The mount command automatically creates a loop device from a regular file if a filesystem type is not specified or the
filesystem is known for libblkid, for example:
mount /tmp/disk.img /mnt
mount -t ext3 /tmp/disk.img /mnt
This type of mount knows about four options, namely loop, offset, sizelimit and encryption, that are really options to
losetup(8). If the mount requires a passphrase, you will be prompted for one unless you specify a file descriptor to read
from instead with the --pass-fd option. (These options can be used in addition to those specific to the filesystem type.)
Since Linux 2.6.25 is supported auto-destruction of loop devices and then any loop device allocated by mount will be freed
by umount independently on /etc/mtab.
You can also free a loop device by hand, using `losetup -d' or `umount -d`.
RETURN CODES
mount has the following return codes (the bits can be ORed):
0 success
1 incorrect invocation or permissions
2 system error (out of memory, cannot fork, no more loop devices)
4 internal mount bug
8 user interrupt
16 problems writing or locking /etc/mtab
32 mount failure
64 some mount succeeded
NOTES
The syntax of external mount helpers is:
/sbin/mount. spec dir [-sfnv] [-o options] [-t type.subtype]
where the is filesystem type and -sfnvo options have same meaning like standard mount options. The -t option is used
for filesystems with subtypes support (for example /sbin/mount.fuse -t fuse.sshfs).
FILES
/etc/fstab filesystem table
/etc/mtab table of mounted filesystems
/etc/mtab~ lock file
/etc/mtab.tmp temporary file
/etc/filesystems a list of filesystem types to try
SEE ALSO
mount(2), umount(2), fstab(5), umount(8), swapon(8), nfs(5), xfs(5), e2label(8), xfs_admin(8), mountd(8), nfsd(8),
mke2fs(8), tune2fs(8), losetup(8)
BUGS
It is possible for a corrupted filesystem to cause a crash.
Some Linux filesystems don't support -o sync and -o dirsync (the ext2, ext3, fat and vfat filesystems do support synchro‐
nous updates (a la BSD) when mounted with the sync option).
The -o remount may not be able to change mount parameters (all ext2fs-specific parameters, except sb, are changeable with a
remount, for example, but you can't change gid or umask for the fatfs).
Mount by label or uuid will work only if your devices have the names listed in /proc/partitions. In particular, it may
well fail if the kernel was compiled with devfs but devfs is not mounted.
It is possible that files /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts don't match. The first file is based only on the mount command
options, but the content of the second file also depends on the kernel and others settings (e.g. remote NFS server. In
particular case the mount command may reports unreliable information about a NFS mount point and the /proc/mounts file usu‐
ally contains more reliable information.)
Checking files on NFS filesystem referenced by file descriptors (i.e. the fcntl and ioctl families of functions) may lead
to inconsistent result due to the lack of consistency check in kernel even if noac is used.
HISTORY
A mount command existed in Version 5 AT&T UNIX.
AVAILABILITY
The mount command is part of the util-linux package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
util-linux December 2004 MOUNT(8)
