170

The last two fields on each line in fstab (dump and pass) are some numbers (usually, 0).

What do these numbers mean?

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
UUID=030ccf66-5195-4835-ba3e-f5d7a5403c05 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1

2 Answers 2

153

Copy/paste from man fstab:

The fifth field, (fs_freq), is used for these filesystems by the dump(8) command to determine which filesystems need to be dumped. If the fifth field is not present, a value of zero is returned and dump will assume that the filesystem does not need to be dumped.

The sixth field, (fs_passno), is used by the fsck(8) program to determine the order in which filesystem checks are done at reboot time. The root filesystem should be specified with a fs_passno of 1, and other filesystems should have a fs_passno of 2. Filesystems within a drive will be checked sequentially, but filesystems on different drives will be checked at the same time to utilize parallelism available in the hardware. If the sixth field is not present or zero, a value of zero is returned and fsck will assume that the filesystem does not need to be checked.

5
  • 33
    But, what does the dump-utility do? (It has no man-page)
    – elzapp
    Oct 28, 2010 at 9:34
  • 15
    If you don't have a dump man page, then you don't have dump installed. See manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/maverick/en/man8/dump.8.html - it's for backup purposes.
    – htorque
    Oct 28, 2010 at 10:36
  • @JanC by check you mean file system error check ?
    – Alex Jones
    Dec 5, 2014 at 14:03
  • 10
    Related: superuser.com/questions/247523/… TL;DR: just set dump to zero always, and pass to 1 for root drive, 2 for any other drive.
    – Niko Fohr
    Oct 13, 2017 at 10:45
  • 5
    @np8 you don't want fsck running on something like a NFS for example, so "2 for any other drive" isn't entirely correct
    – Enrico
    May 1, 2019 at 21:26
15

Simple blockhead answer is , first field determines if it should be dumped, second field determines if it should be checked during startup and in what sequence. Check the manual for the rest!

2
  • 24
    Define dump FFS 😡😑
    – chx101
    Apr 3, 2021 at 19:00
  • 1
    @chx101 see here: superuser.com/questions/247523/… -- short answer is that 'dump' seems to be rarely used anymore, so you would almost always expect this to be zero. The second number is used by the more widely used fsck to check the filesystem, and if so in what order (root should be 1, rest should increment, or zero to skip checking the filesystem)
    – pzkpfw
    Mar 7, 2022 at 12:17

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .