What is the Mount logic in Fedora (or any newer Linux)?

[concoran]

Hello,

I have noticed a new thing that I hadn't in old versions of linux.

In old, if you wanted a certain partition other than main (/) mounted at boot, you would specifically mention it in /etc/mtab or fstab (I don't remember). But when FC8 boots, it automatically mounts all windows/linux partitions under /media directory. These partitions are usually not mentioned in mtab or fstab. So, how does Fedora decide which to mount? Does it go about mounting each and every possible it could?

TIA for any info.

[Bslagowski]

I think that might actually be a Gnome thing. I'm running Openbox and none of my other Linux partitions are automatically mounted, nor is the FAT32 partition I set up to share files between Linux and Windows. So I guess the question is, are you using a standard Fedora install with Gnome?

[concoran]

Yes, this is a stock fedora 8 installation with GNOME.

[Bslagowski]

Then I would imagine it's a Gnome thing. Like I said, running Openbox this doesn't happen.

http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/HAL

"How to tell gnome-mount to mount things your way"

Another thing you might want to change is the mounting point. gnome-mount defaults to mounting at /media/LABEL.

The way to change this is by using /etc/fstab. The mount options provided at /etc/fstab will be added AFTER the ones by gnome-mount, so now you have control.

Is this something you want changed? Or you're just interested in WHY it's doing what it's doing?

[forkbomb]

Yeah, it's a GNOME thing. There are all sorts of questions around the board with people asking how to disable automounting of volumes - the problem usually has absolutely nothing to do with /etc/fstab.

Mounting devices is handled the same in all Linux distros, up until the point of logging into a GUI where things might start being different because the desktop environments like to take over your computer. The kernel looks to /etc/fstab to see what to mount when, where, how, and with what miscellaneous options.

I use Fluxbox myself and I don't have any odd automounting going on (come to think of it I think I even have the autofs service disabled because it doesn't even work under Fluxbox.)