xref: /freebsd/share/man/man5/fstab.5 (revision 203f7a287743cdbf188116cbe198933201f4fa4f)

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.\"     @(#)fstab.5	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/5/93
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.Dd February 11, 2008
.Dt FSTAB 5
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm fstab
.Nd static information about the file systems
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In fstab.h
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The file
.Nm
contains descriptive information about the various file
systems.
.Nm
is only read by programs, and not written;
it is the duty of the system administrator to properly create
and maintain this file.
Each file system is described on a separate line;
fields on each line are separated by tabs or spaces.
The order of records in
.Nm
is important because
.Xr fsck 8 ,
.Xr mount 8 ,
and
.Xr umount 8
sequentially iterate through
.Nm
doing their thing.
.Pp
The first field,
.Pq Fa fs_spec ,
describes the block special device or
remote file system to be mounted.
For file systems of type
.Em ufs ,
the special file name is the block special file name,
and not the character special file name.
If a program needs the character special file name,
the program must create it by appending a ``r'' after the
last ``/'' in the special file name.
.Pp
The second field,
.Pq Fa fs_file ,
describes the mount point for the file system.
For swap partitions, this field should be specified as ``none''.
.Pp
The third field,
.Pq Fa fs_vfstype ,
describes the type of the file system.
The system can support various file system types.
Only the root, /usr, and /tmp file systems need be statically
compiled into the kernel;
everything else will be automatically loaded at mount
time.
(Exception: the UFS family - FFS and LFS cannot
currently be demand-loaded.)
Some people still prefer to statically
compile other file systems as well.
.Pp
The fourth field,
.Pq Fa fs_mntops ,
describes the mount options associated with the file system.
It is formatted as a comma separated list of options.
It contains at least the type of mount (see
.Fa fs_type
below) plus any additional options
appropriate to the file system type.
See the options flag
.Pq Fl o
in the
.Xr mount 8
page and the file system specific page, such as
.Xr mount_nfs 8 ,
for additional options that may be specified.
.Pp
If the options ``userquota'' and/or ``groupquota'' are specified,
the file system is automatically processed by the
.Xr quotacheck 8
command, and user and/or group disk quotas are enabled with
.Xr quotaon 8 .
By default,
file system quotas are maintained in files named
.Pa quota.user
and
.Pa quota.group
which are located at the root of the associated file system.
These defaults may be overridden by putting an equal sign
and an alternative absolute pathname following the quota option.
Thus, if the user quota file for
.Pa /tmp
is stored in
.Pa /var/quotas/tmp.user ,
this location can be specified as:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
userquota=/var/quotas/tmp.user
.Ed
.Pp
If the option ``noauto'' is specified, the file system will not be automatically
mounted at system startup.
Note that, for network file systems
of third party types
(i.e., types supported by additional software
not included in the base system)
to be automatically mounted at system startup,
the
.Va extra_netfs_types
.Xr rc.conf 5
variable must be used to extend the
.Xr rc 8
startup script's list of network file system types.
.Pp
The type of the mount is extracted from the
.Fa fs_mntops
field and stored separately in the
.Fa fs_type
field (it is not deleted from the
.Fa fs_mntops
field).
If
.Fa fs_type
is ``rw'' or ``ro'' then the file system whose name is given in the
.Fa fs_file
field is normally mounted read-write or read-only on the
specified special file.
If
.Fa fs_type
is ``sw'' then the special file is made available as a piece of swap
space by the
.Xr swapon 8
command at the end of the system reboot procedure.
The fields other than
.Fa fs_spec
and
.Fa fs_type
are unused.
If
.Fa fs_type
is specified as ``xx'' the entry is ignored.
This is useful to show disk partitions which are currently unused.
.Pp
The fifth field,
.Pq Fa fs_freq ,
is used for these file systems by the
.Xr dump 8
command to determine which file systems need to be dumped.
If the fifth field is not present, a value of zero is returned and
.Nm dump
will assume that the file system does not need to be dumped.
.Pp
The sixth field,
.Pq Fa fs_passno ,
is used by the
.Xr fsck 8
and
.Xr quotacheck 8
programs to determine the order in which file system and quota
checks are done at reboot time.
The
.Fa fs_passno
field can be any value between 0 and
.Ql INT_MAX Ns -1 .
.Pp
The root file system should be specified with a
.Fa fs_passno
of 1, and other file systems should have a
.Fa fs_passno
of 2 or greater.
A file system with a
.Fa fs_passno
value of 1 is always checked sequentially and be completed before
another file system is processed, and it will be processed before
all file systems with a larger
.Fa fs_passno .
.Pp
For any given value of
.Fa fs_passno ,
file systems within a drive will be checked sequentially,
but file systems on different drives will be checked at the
same time to utilize parallelism available in the hardware.
Once all file system checks are complete for the current
.Fa fs_passno ,
the same process will start over for the next
.Fa fs_passno .
.Pp
If the sixth field is not present or is zero,
a value of zero is returned and
.Xr fsck 8
and
.Xr quotacheck 8
will assume that the file system does not need to be checked.
.Pp
The
.Fa fs_passno
field can be used to implement finer control when
the system utilities may determine that the file system resides
on a different physical device, when it actually does not, as with a
.Xr ccd 4
device.
All file systems with a lower
.Fa fs_passno
value will be completed before starting on file systems with a
higher
.Fa fs_passno
value.
E.g. all file systems with a
.Fa fs_passno
of 2 will be completed before any file systems with a
.Fa fs_passno
of 3 or greater are started.
Gaps are allowed between the different
.Fa fs_passno
values.
E.g. file systems listed in
.Pa /etc/fstab
may have
.Fa fs_passno
values such as 0, 1, 2, 15, 100, 200, 300, and may appear in any order
within
.Pa /etc/fstab .
.Bd -literal
#define	FSTAB_RW	"rw"	/* read/write device */
#define	FSTAB_RQ	"rq"	/* read/write with quotas */
#define	FSTAB_RO	"ro"	/* read-only device */
#define	FSTAB_SW	"sw"	/* swap device */
#define	FSTAB_XX	"xx"	/* ignore totally */

struct fstab {
	char	*fs_spec;	/* block special device name */
	char	*fs_file;	/* file system path prefix */
	char	*fs_vfstype;	/* File system type, ufs, nfs */
	char	*fs_mntops;	/* Mount options ala -o */
	char	*fs_type;	/* FSTAB_* from fs_mntops */
	int	fs_freq;	/* dump frequency, in days */
	int	fs_passno;	/* pass number on parallel fsck */
};
.Ed
.Pp
The proper way to read records from
.Pa fstab
is to use the routines
.Xr getfsent 3 ,
.Xr getfsspec 3 ,
.Xr getfstype 3 ,
and
.Xr getfsfile 3 .
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /etc/fstab -compact
.It Pa /etc/fstab
The file
.Nm
resides in
.Pa /etc .
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr getfsent 3 ,
.Xr getvfsbyname 3 ,
.Xr ccd 4 ,
.Xr dump 8 ,
.Xr fsck 8 ,
.Xr mount 8 ,
.Xr quotacheck 8 ,
.Xr quotaon 8 ,
.Xr swapon 8 ,
.Xr umount 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
file format appeared in
.Bx 4.0 .