VI. Mounting File Systems on Disks

There is a long list of file system types that can be accessed through Linux. You do this by using themountcommand. Linux has a special directory used tomountfile systems to the existing Linux directory tree. This directory is called/mnt. It is here that you can dynamically attach new file systems from external (or internal) storage devices that were not mounted at boot time. Actually you canmountfile systems anywhere (not just on/mnt), but it's better for organization. Here is a brief overview.

Any time you specify a mount point you must first make sure that that directory exists. For example to mount a floppy under/mn__t/floppy_you must be sure that/mnt/floppyexists. After all, suppose we want to have a CDROM and a floppy mounted at the same time? They can't both be mounted under/mnt(you would be trying to access 2 file systems through one directory!). So we create directories for each device’s file system under the parent directory/mnt. You decide what you want to call the directories, but make them easy to remember. Keep in mind that until you learn to manipulate the file/etc/fstab_(covered later), only rootcan mount and unmount file systems.

mkdir /mnt/floppy

mkdir /mnt/cdrom

Newer distributions usually create these mount points for you, but you might want to add others for yourself (mount points for subject disks or images, etc. like/mnt/data_or/mnt/analysis_)