Linux Crash Course - The /etc/fstab file

In a previous video we went over the basics of storage, and in this episode of Linux Crash Course, I'll show you how to automatically mount storage volumes when you boot your server. The primary focus will be going over the /etc/fstab file.
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#LinuxEssentials #CLI #fstab

[@CyperN077]

Thanks Jay this is a very good video. I like how you reiterate how cautious you must be in order to use the feature.

[@Ray_TambaBudol_Marcos]

Thank you Jay! I love Linux. Next week I'm gonna have a Linux admin technical interview and one on of the topic is mounting samba and configuration of fstab. This is perfect refresher.

[@ArchTechUws1542]

Thank you for the videos, these 2 videos resume my classes into 1 hour.. great work.

[@12Q46HPRN]

Thank you so very much! You have de-mystified fstab for me in a very patient yet non-condescending manner. You even explained what the final two digits (0 0) in each line meant. Again, thank you.

[@kakarroto007]

Thank you SO much! While I found this information online, and probably could have bumbled my way through editing F-Stab, I still wouldn't have understood _why_ I was doing it.

[@dankerman321]

Thanks for explaining the fstab file... I was struggling with installing a 2nd HD in my laptop... the fstab file had errors which I could now fix. HD works now!

[@fentiger865]

Thanks for this. I find your explanations simple to understand but not in any way patronising. It's nice to have a basic understanding of how it works rather than the 'just write this and it will work' style of some other content providers. A new subscriber

[@magicmanj32]

Great video for a new Linux user, know how and why is a great learning tool, thanks

[@markh2827]

Thanks Jay, very informative and easy to understand. Keep it up. Cheers 🙂

[@Jazztache]

21:30 `lsblk -f` would be much better to run here, because it shows the UUIDs with the names, and the partition type, all in one table. This is super useful to get all of your information in one place.

[@samuelitooooo]

Thanks for this. The presentation is cleaner too.

[@rickforges8918]

Just became a supporter on patron , always found your vids. great. Appreciate the detail , as sometimes the 'LITTLE' missed things get us 'Stuck' . Good content for newbie and intermediate as well. See you soon Jay !

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Thank you so much, I appreciate the support!

[@trapOrdoom]

Yesss!! Thank goodness you started the video saying exactly what I needed to hear!!

[@Nixima81]

Thank you for this. One more baby step in my Linux journey.

[@kkkrrrr9024]

Great work Jay! For me the best Linux channel. Greets from Munich.

[@MattiasMagnusson]

Thanks! You really made my day, forgot to setup the second drive as /var on my initial setup of my server, all sorts of crazy things happened in my homelab before that xD

[@TR1ckY_TV]

Great Tutorial! 🔥 please more of these sir 🙏🏻

[@LearnLinuxTV]

I have several more on the way, being edited right now. I'm thinking by the end of next week or sooner, I'll have another tutorial in this series out. I probably have 4-5 of these still on my hard disk waiting to be edited.

[@jonathanrider4417]

This was tremendously helpful for me - I have been using linux for more than 10 years and have never gotten my head around fstab. I recently added a 4TB drive and partitioned it into 4 - mounting until now as media - now finally I can mount the drive at startup. I would like to see a video about managing multiple drives on a PC that has 2 or more OS. You videos are the best because you explain things very well and include peripheral information along the way which is extremely useful for people like me!

[@Douglas-hw8is]

Fully agree - great viid!

[@RonaldModesitt]

Very well and thoroughly presented! Many thanks.

[@ogungbeopeyemi2684]

Thank you so much for this… I really struggle starting my VM because of error in fstab.. this really helps 👍

[@opps5915]

This channel better than university.. you are my love ❤❤

[@peterjansen4826]

This is essential knowledge for every Linux-user, no exception.

[@daverawson123]

So that’s what the 0s and 1s at the end of the lines mean🤔. Another brilliant vid Jay👏

[@wildmanjeff42]

Thanks for the video Jay !

[@matheusquagliato6320]

I think this is one reaaaaally good lab. Thanks man

[@duncan-mcrae]

Thanks. Such a good format for leaning Linux. Much appreciated

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Thanks for watching!

[@TON-vz3pe]

Your explanation is perfect.

[@GuyManley]

thanks. i built new pc and put arch on my old one. couldn't figure out how to add my 2nd HDD to it until i watch your 2 videos. cheers

[@scottspa74]

Excellent explainer and tutorial! Thank you.

[@G3Number]

Thanks for the video! Learned a lot❤

[@chromerims]

Thank you for showing how to obtain UUID info to load into /etc/fstab 👍

[@rossgeography]

exceptional tutorial - thank you!

[@TedCorriveau]

Thank you sir! I've been a linux user (not a guru) for a number of years, and have struggled to understand why even after adding the lines to the fstab, my local shares sometimes populate, and sometimes don't. Until I saw your video It didn't dawn on me that I was using a user-specific mount point /user/me/desktop/folder instead of /mnt .. feels stupid, but nice to know the real answer :) Thank You

[@Ranblv]

samba shares are not block devices. you can mount them from anywhere. I usually prefer /samba

[@FurikuriYugi]

Thanks, never thought to do that.

[@ardeny100]

Love your videos, keep it up

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Thanks, will do!

[@k4tipunb4yani12]

This is really helpful. Thank you.

[@parthachoudhury4152]

Great explanation. Thank you so much.

[@anas6435]

Very informative and clear .. Can you please explain more Linux Storage topics? things like LVM and LUK

[@kapiteinslaapkop7640]

very helpfull and comprehensive lesson !

[@nicolasdavid6970]

Great video, learned a lot!

[@tongjojo901]

amazing topic, thank you, great help.

[@Frank-do1bg]

Thank you! Really helpful video.

[@Douglas-hw8is]

Great vid - many thanks 👍

[@comahrn]

such a good tutorial, thank you :)

[@sussusamogus7831]

The order is a bit messy in the playlist. For instance, groups come before users, this comes before the "Formatting & Mounting" video, even though those videos come after the videos they are mentioned in. Anyways, great video as always!

[@dragonek_gnu_linux_pl]

very important knowelage like always :). Mounting of disks are difrent than we have on windows so its good to know and understand it :)

[@bytemylife]

this was awesome! thanks. I can't wait for you to do one on ZFS?!

[@EUPescar]

Great tutorial!

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

Love the Linux Essentials videos... Thanks for the series, they are very helpful for a 4 year linux still new user... :-) HaHAHa I have done Oops thing several times because I for got a ( " ) here or there... Then have to USB in to fix it... Lol Thanks for the tips... I have to say the UUID is the best way to go. I have had drives change and cause all kinds of Thanks for the video Jay! LLAP

[@humzamuddasar1298]

Great video. Thanks

[@mattroddev]

Great content. Thank you.

[@heckyes]

Amazing content.

[@Hanagigi]

THANK YOU for helping me understand what the heck "^" meant! How could I even fathom that it means ctrl? Something new every day...

[@muthukannanmurugachockalin7321]

great lecture

[@AndresLeonRangel]

i had to write an incident report because of an issue with mounting an AWS EBS volume. I used the LABEL in the cloud-init script. Once you mount is OK, once you reboot that volume never mounts again. the PostgreSQL data was thought to be gone. But thank God issue was found and I fixed it. Always use the UUID

[@derelbenkoenig]

Very helpful video! One thing I am still wondering about is how disk encryption works here. I guess the system has to unlock the encrypted partition before being able to mount file systems but I am not sure how to accomplish that automatically on startup. Is that something also configured via fstab or elsewhere?

[@john-r-edge]

Great tutorial Thanos - i learned some new things. An option I have used sometimes is first to mount a new drive with a "mount" command. Then I look at the /etc/mtab file which gives list of all currently mounted items. I copy the line from mtab for the new disk and paste that into the fstab file. Then it mounts automatically. I think I used that because the mount command seemed easier than working out the fstab entry directly. Any benefits for that approach? Thanks.

[@alexandersemigrodskikh8400]

Good one.

[@BeeRich33]

Might want to provide some clarity on UUID vs PARTUUID. I've also seen 8-character UUIDs.

[@TheGnomophobe]

thx worked for me

[@skrach37]

Thanks for the tutorial, very well explained. The thing is that my hard drive has a problem with superblock. Do you know where to find information to solve this? Been looking and there is to much information.

[@LoveAnim3]

thank you!

[@edbouhl3100]

Thanks!

[@chiforce]

Thanks Jay. I'm new to Linux and really appreciate your style of education. Please explain to me how you get the I between $ mount I grep sbd. I can not find that character on my keyboard

[@samuelitooooo]

16:00 After hitting enter, I got the message: `mount: (hint) your fstab has been modified, but systemd still uses the old version; use 'systemctl daemon-reload' to reload.` At least the mounting worked, according to lsblk. 21:13 WOW You were right. Before unmounting, my test flash drive was sdd1; it became sde1 when I mounted it again. 😅

[@JoseLopez-oz1xm]

Very good vid, I would ask if you have done a video on OMV and how to mount nfs files auto into linux. Is it the same as this video?

[@Yasinarbi]

Thank you

[@wolfganggosejacob779]

good explanation, your system has crypted filesystems but your new sdb storage has not. can you explain (automatic) mounting of crypted fs because of the passwords? also mounting of samba shares and other network shares... with sense of internal or password files? thank you

[@peterjantzer4767]

When working with system: Step one: Type in command Step two: REMOVE HANDS FROM KEYBOARD Step three: Verify command you typed is correct Step four (optional): Say short prayer Step five: Hit enter key

[@stephanc7192]

Good video

[@InmobiliariaPromueve]

Great video. Do you know if there is a text editor I can use for ubuntu core in a Pi 3?

[@DavidKHill]

Great video by the way. I have a question regarding the no auto. Can this feature benefit the wear and tear on disk? That is, if we run mount from within the script just during the time the backups are run, the umount the volume after the back ups are completed. This would shave wear and tear cycles off of the disk if it's not running. So having an unmounted disk connected to a server when it's no mounted, do you know if they're spun down during this time? Thanks.

[@puppy_BYTE]

thanks, excellent, automounting a ssd drive, is it a good idea to make it default,noatime?

[@Anbualex]

Are you looking over my shoulder? lol I was looking at the fstab file last night.

[@glenhathaway9131]

Same here

[@stevefiorito5379]

Thanks for this video. I've had a hard time trying to wrap my head around how a computer identifies a particular drive: there is the OS assigned label (sda), the label that I give to the drive (my home drive), and the UUID. Knowing which to use has been more than confusing. I recently lost an external drive due to a power surge in our home electricity. I had to replace the drive and restore the files using a backup. The problem was that all of my custom folder icons were no longer working (my custom folder icon images are located on my boot drive, not my external drive). I thought that the solution was to simply "name" my new external drive as the failed drive was named. That did NOT work. So, the custom folder icon links are using something other than the user-assigned-name.

[@debeeriz]

l got caught out thinking the uuid was hard coded into the disks, saved the fstab file, reinstalled mint and compared the saved and new fstab files and the uuid's were completely different.

[@Dr.Jerico]

hey Jay! some experts say that it is better to create a new file and not edit the actual fstab file. What do you say about it? Thanks for your great content btw.

[@parthachoudhury4152]

It's always recommended to create a backup and then modify the original. Not just fstab but for any other file. You can always restore if required.

[@cesarantonio1884]

Good afternoon, Wanted to know if you can recommend a good Linux administrator course LCFS. I've been looking at different one but don't know much of it. Thanks

[@youkilledtony]

That's a fun file to mess up :-)

[@GauteAnimationNorway]

This made mounting easy, but I can't set my steam library into the mounted harddrive. Which is what I need that extra space for. Doesn't an ext 4 work with steam? can't find the mounted folders at all to add a steam library in. I even created a mounted folder on home just to see for sure it isn't showing up on steam. On steam add library options it's pretty much invisible/non exisiting.

[@tuulymusic3856]

I deleted it kek

[@buttdickenz]

Before doing anything I always back up important files, If I mess up I can then use a live environment and restore them

[@NoEgg4u]

From where does the "blkid" command derive the "UUID" value? How does the "UUID" value get chosen? Is the UUID some unique serial number that manufacturers put on their storage devices? If you buy 10 identical flash drives, your computer will somehow be able to tell them apart from each other, as each one will have a unique UUID. But how does your computer know which flash drive is which? What is it reading on the flash drive to determine which one has which UUID? Thank you.

[@tomashley9246]

Each drive has a small PCB that has the UUID embedded. It's like a MAC address. Unique to each piece of hardware.

[@jbgrenouille2527]

Greetings, I have tried many times to create automounts for disks in local network and it does not work for me, any advice?

[@abodawead9039]

i got confuse about something , when i set the "ro" option to a volume that I use for back-up , how it will do the back-up ? I think i messed something in the video . thank you very much , great video and very useful one . 😁

[@StaceyJenkinsdc]

I’m also confused on the ro option. Is it read only for users other than root?

[@abodawead9039]

I try my best to find solution . but for now , set ro option for partitions managed by root user only . 😁

[@chillnacho]

I think the "ro" option is for only a computer that you don't want to allow to make changes to that volume. You aren't making changes to the USB drive itself. You can write to it on one computer and then plug it into another computer and it will be read only. At least that was my take on it. I was a little confused by how he said it too.

[@Shohan11d]

Hello, I have a drive that is Bitlocker encrypted. It doesn't show the UUID of the drive using blkid cmd. it shows the partuuid but using partuuid doesn't work from my attempt. Is there any way I can mount Bitlocker drive at startup?

[@eriksundell1400]

Hmmm... if /etc/fstab is where the computer knows what storage to mount during startup, where is that file actually located?

[@obfuscateidentity2329]

What about auto mounting a CD/.iso image ?

[@babygravy9383]

What about network drives/shares?

[@davidwayne9982]

PLEASE PLEASE can you make one on PERMISSIONS DENIED error in formatting..? I formatted one here in LMDE 5 while watching you discuss it in UBUNTU-- but I thought they would be pretty much the same for this... WRONG? or right?? HELP-- can't use my 2T Drive!!!!

[@JoeSmith-wx1uq]

Thanks for a great tutorial. However, I am remain uncertain regarding when to use UUID or PARTUUID in /etc/fstab. When you added /dev/sdb1, you used the UUID for the whole of the USB drive. I guess that doesn’t much matter when using USB sticks but it may be more important when using partitions on attached drives or shares from a NAS, for example. When adding a partition to /etc/fstab, should we use UUID (which is for the whole disk) or PARTUUID (which is for the partition)? Many thanks, Joe.

[@clivesgarage]

this is sooooo frustrating. I cannot find the previous video you talking about. I've searched everywhere. What is the title of the video please?

[@ShankarDada010]

Haa how to take backup for cd /etc/fstab i want backup for fstab how to take please help with command ?

[@davidwayne9982]

QUESTION-- I have a USB stick (thumb drive-= whatever you like to call it) 134 GIG that I was going to install VENTOY to make a MULTI-BOOT drive-- and it refuses to format. I can run the formatter and it says "formatted successfully- but when I put it in the machine- it shows 125 gig- and will not allow the software I want to download. Ive redone it in EXFAT (which they recommend) -with same result--- SUGGESTIONS???? I can't find anything on this and no one to ask.

[@nexus384]

how u mount a folder from the home directory like download

[@submarine.7seas]

is there a way to try mounting but don't hang the boot if fails? I have a little home server and the drive I used for web server dada died. When the server was rebooted it hung. I ended up having to PXE boot into a recovery and edit the fstab file.

[@submarine.7seas]

UUID=uuidnum1234 /mount/point ext4 default,nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=1ms 0 0 ?

[@symbioticparasite6268]

O man did I F up, needed to get the data of an NTFS drive ..... days of transfers, so I did it in steps, so I automatically mounted it in fstab, when I was done I needed to repartition the NTFS drive, I did, then forgot to delete the line in the fstab ..... it wasn't the same so when I rebooted..... I was locked out of my system because it couldn't find the F inga drive which was nonexistent by now ......

[@ShankarDada010]

Why no one is talking about taking backup

[@KeithWhittingham]

Chicken and egg question... How does Linux know where to find the fstab file if the drive it is on hasn't been mounted yet?

[@vordreller6428]

What's the difference between fstab and mtab?

[@LearnLinuxTV]

mtab shows what's currently mounted, fstab shows what you have configured for possible mounting.

[@MrCCnCMining]

Can I move my Home Directory to another Disk? I'd love to see a video for this for Linux Mint 20.3, for a drive that is already formatted and mounted. I'd at-least make a donation..........

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Not a bad idea actually! I might consider that. Thanks!

[@1HandsomeDevil]

And, fingers crossed, moving the /tmp directory as well?