mnttab and fstab

[Omar Alvi_1]

Hi,

I would like to know what the difference is between /etc/fstab and /etc/mnttab files

which one do we update manually? which is read by the mountall or mount-a commands?

Regards,

-Alvi

[melvyn burnard]

try doing man fstab and man mnntab.
The first paragraph in hte description section will tell you what you wish to know.

[Sergejs Svitnevs · Accepted solution]

/etc/fstab file describes all possibly mounted filesystems. The mount program uses this file to mount at startup time of the system all the necessary filesystems.

The information about all the filesystems actually mounted is kept in a file system mount table named /etc/mnttab.

Regards,
Sergejs

[Zeev Schultz]

fstab is the one you should care about as
its the one referenced during mounts.mnttab
is a table updated by mount (and used by bdf for example).you don't edit mnttab but edit
fstab and put each mounted directory there with
mount specific options for the filesystem.

And as suggested read the man pages for more information.

[Ameet_HP]

We need to update /etc/fstab file as it keeps information which filesystems to mount on boot. Also, if you updte this file with device & mount point, at # prompt you will not need to specify device, simple mount followed by mount point will work, device information will get picked up from /etc/fstab.

/etc/mnttab gets updated by system up on mounting each filesystems. For Administrative purpose, it is used to check which filesystems are mounted.