Learning Debian GNU/Linux

Working with Devices

This section presents commands that work with devices. You’ll learn how to mount and unmount devices and how to format a floppy diskette.

Mounting and Unmounting Drives

You cannot access a hard drive partition, CD-ROM, or floppy diskette until the related device or partition is mounted. Mounting a device checks the status of the device and readies it for access. Linux can be configured to automatically mount a device or partition when it boots; but you must manually mount other devices and partitions.

Tip

If a device uses removable media, the media may not be present when the system boots. If the system is configured to automatically mount such a device and the media is not present, an error occurs. Therefore, devices that use removable media are not generally configured for automatic mounting.

Before you can remove media from a device, you must unmount it. The system also unmounts devices when it shuts down. Mounting and unmounting devices is a privileged operation; generally, only the root user can manually mount and unmount devices.

To mount a device or partition, you use the mount command, which has the following pattern:

mount options device directory

The mount command provides many options. However, you can generally use the mount command without any options; consult the manual page to learn about the available options.

Tip

The reason you can use the mount command without options is that the file /etc/fstab describes your system’s devices and the type ...