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I have a partition mounted with mount /mnt/filesys.bin /mnt/mymnt/

Each time I reboot, I need to remount. How can I keep this mounted after every reboot?

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  • 2
    Hello. Isn't it possible to add entry in /etc/fstab for that?
    – pa4080
    Nov 22, 2018 at 9:25
  • 1
    Can you explain more? I am new to Linux
    – Nour Jandali
    Nov 22, 2018 at 9:27
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    I think /etc/fstab is the correct think to look for, not a Bash script.
    – iBug
    Nov 22, 2018 at 10:52
  • How is there not a command that just saves my currently mounted drives? Is this a toy OS?
    – Andrew Koster
    Oct 19, 2021 at 22:28
  • Well, there is such a command. sudo cp /etc/mtab /etc/fstab would do that. It's not something I would ever want to try! At any given time, I have a number of temporary mounts that I wouldn't want saved.
    – Auspex
    Oct 20, 2021 at 11:51

2 Answers 2

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From man fstab:

The file /etc/fstab contains descriptive information about the filesystems the system can mount. fstab is only read by programs, and not written; it is the duty of the system administrator to properly create and maintain this file.

To do what you want you just need to add an entry for this mount in /etc/fstab as follows:

  1. Open new terminal window Ctrl+Alt+T.

  2. Open the file /etc/fstab for edit with root privileges, using nano:

    sudo nano /etc/fstab

  3. Go to the bottom of the file and add the following line - here I'm assuming it is an image file, so we need to use the loop option (reference):

    /mnt/filesys.bin /mnt/mymnt/ auto nofail,defaults,loop 0 0

    If you want to mount physical device (or partition), you can identify it by several different ways, for example by its UUID. To find the UUID use sudo blkid while the device is mounted (or use the GUI tool Disks). In this case the entry could look like:

    /dev/disk/by-uuid/a58b40e4-eb9b-4720-835b-785a3be3ae33 /mnt/mymnt/ auto nosuid,nodev,nofail 0 0

    or:

    UUID=a58b40e4-eb9b-4720-835b-785a3be3ae33 /mnt/mymnt/ auto nosuid,nodev,nofail 0 0

    Where a58b40e4-eb9b-4720-835b-785a3be3ae33 is the UUID of your device.

  4. Save the file: Ctrl+O, then exit from nano: Ctrl+X.

  5. Restart the system or type sudo mount -a to see the result.

Do not forgot to remove that entry if you remove the image file.

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    For external media I use UUID and the 'nofail' option. To get the UUID, issue the blkid command in terminal, while the device is mounted,then to fstab use UUID=<uuid> /mnt/mymount auto nofail,defaults
    – Stephen Boston
    Nov 22, 2018 at 9:56
  • If I was writing the answer now I would include some example of systemd.mount unit.
    – pa4080
    Mar 21 at 20:47
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@pa4080 is totally right, but the really easy solution is (running as the superuser, so sudo su first):

mount /mnt/filesys.bin /mnt/mymnt/
grep mymnt /etc/mtab >>/etc/fstab

The first line mounts your device with whatever other options you need, the second will put it into /etc/fstab with the same options so that it gets mounted on every reboot.

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  • You're the only person with a solution that's an actual command, on the command line. Everyone else has an essay about how to manually modify the files by hand.
    – Andrew Koster
    Oct 19, 2021 at 22:32

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