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Info Node: (libc.info)Filesystem Handling

(libc.info)Filesystem Handling


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Controlling and Querying Mounts
===============================

   All files are in filesystems, and before you can access any file, its
filesystem must be mounted.  Because of Unix's concept of _Everything
is a file_, mounting of filesystems is central to doing almost
anything.  This section explains how to find out what filesystems are
currently mounted and what filesystems are available for mounting, and
how to change what is mounted.

   The classic filesystem is the contents of a disk drive.  The concept
is considerably more abstract, though, and lots of things other than
disk drives can be mounted.

   Some block devices don't correspond to traditional devices like disk
drives.  For example, a loop device is a block device whose driver uses
a regular file in another filesystem as its medium.  So if that regular
file contains appropriate data for a filesystem, you can by mounting the
loop device essentially mount a regular file.

   Some filesystems aren't based on a device of any kind.  The "proc"
filesystem, for example, contains files whose data is made up by the
filesystem driver on the fly whenever you ask for it.  And when you
write to it, the data you write causes changes in the system.  No data
gets stored.

Mount Information
What is or could be mounted?
Mount-Unmount-Remount
Controlling what is mounted and how

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