Linux Mount Command Tutorial With Examples

As we know Linux operating system mainly uses files and folders as operational units. Files folders are stored in file systems and disks. There are different tools to manage file systems and disks. But mount is de facto command used to mount and list disks and file systems? In this tutorial, we will look at different types of usages of the mount.

List Mounted Paths

Normally most of the Linux operating systems are started by mounting some file systems for system partition and user partition. The mounted partitions can be changed according to configuration. These partitions and file systems can be listed just issuing mount command like below. In this example we can see that are are some pseudo partitions those used by operations system-related functionalities.

$ mount

Mount Given Partition or Disk To The Specified Path

Mount file systems and partitions are not so hard or complex in the command line. To mount just provide the partitions that will be mounted and the destination where the mounted partition will be accessed.

$ mount /dev/vdb1 /mnt

Mount Ext4 File System

In the previous example, we have mounted a partition without specifying a file system. Because the mount is decided the partitions file system automatically and set required parameters internally without needing any additional information. But sometimes this can not work. We can specify the file system type with -t parameter like below. In this example, we will mount the ext4 file system.

$ mount -t ext4 /dev/vdb1 /mnt

Mount NTFS File System

As we know NTFS is a Windows native file system. The mounting NTFS file system is very similar. NTFS provides a reach feature set like the BTRFS file system which is used by some of the distributions. We can see from mount output that NTFS is named fuseblk .

$ mount -t ntfs /dev/vdb1 /mnt

Mount FAT File System

FAT is the predecessor of the NTFS file system and used wide in different systems like cameras, TV, etc. FAT file systems can be specifically mounted like below.

$ mount | grep vdb1

Mount ISO File System

CD-ROM is old technology nowadays. But the CD-ROM de facto file system ISO is used regularly for distribution of Linux distributions, Setup tools, etc. These ISO file systems can be mounted with the following command.

$ mount -t iso9660 virtio-win.iso /mnt

Mount All File Systems Of Fstab

Up to now we have mounted file systems by giving details. There is a configuration file used by mount which resides /etc/fstab . This file is used to mount file systems during boot time. But this configuration file can be used after boot.

$ sudo mount -a

$ mount -a

Unmount All File Systems Of Fstab

In the previous example, we have used fstab file as mount configuration but this can be also used as unmount configuration to unmount all file systems specified in fstab.

$ sudo unmount -a

Mount Specific File Systems Of Fstab

Fstab can be used to get mount configuration of the specific mount points. Below is an example fstab file that provides mount configuration for /mnt . We will mount this line by specifying the mount path.

UUID=01f0e46f-9e44-4e25-8712-886427a3798b /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1 
UUID=764C4C593741045B                     /mnt            ntfs    errors=remount-ro 0       1

And we mount /mnt

$ mount /mnt

List Mounted File Systems

Mounted file systems can be listed with -l parameter.

$ mount -l

List Mounted Ext3 File Systems

While listing specific file systems can be specified to be listed. This can be used

$ mount -l -t ext3

List Mounted Ext4 File Systems

Ext4 file systems can be listed with the -t ext4 parameter like below.

$ mount -l -t ext4

List Mounted Btrfs File Systems

Btrfs file systems can be a list with the -t btrfs like below.

$ mount -l -t btrfs

Bind Mounted Path To New Path

After mounting to a directory the mount point can be changed. We will provide the current mounted point and new mount point in a row with -B parameter. This actually does not removes old mount only adds the new directory as the mount.

$ mount -B /mnt /mnt2

Mount File System Read Only

While mounting file systems there are a lot of options that affect the mount operation. One of the most used options is to read/write option. By default file systems are mounted read/writeable. But there are some situations we need to mount read-only. Mount can mount read-only with -r.

$ mount -r /mnt

Remount Mounted File System

All ready mounted file systems can be remounted easily with -o mount parameter. This is needed some times some configurations about the file system is changed and make new configuration effective.

$ mount -o remount /mnt

Unmount Multiple Mounts

Previously we have mounted multiple mount points. Now we may want to unmount the multiple mount points with the following commands.

$ umount /mnt /mnt2

Lazy Unmount

Unmounting have some restrictions. While there are operations on the mounted partitions these partitions can not be unmounted. This can be an unwanted situation. There is a workaround which will unmount the system after the operation on the mount point.

$ umount -l /mnt

Force Unmount

In the previous example, we have looked lazy unmount which will wait for the operation to end in order to unmount the mount point. There is a hard way which will forcibly unmount the mount point. But keep in mind that this can create problems with file systems.

$ umount -f /mnt