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File systems on Linux and Unix-like operating systems such as macOS can be mounted, unmounted, and remounted using the terminal. File systems on Linux, macOS, and other Unix-like operating systems don’t use separate volume IDs for storage devices like Windows does, for example. Windows assigns each volume a drive letter, such as C: or D:, and each volume’s file system is a tree of directories located under that drive letter. In Linux, the file system is a tree of directories all in one. A mounted storage device has its file system grafted onto this tree so that it appears as an integral part of a contiguous file system.
The newly mounted file system can be accessed from the directory in which it is mounted. This directory is called the mount point for this file system. Many file systems are automatically mounted at boot or on the fly as storage volumes that are attached to the computer at run time. Cautious system administrators can disable the automount features at runtime so they can control connections to the system.
This means that storage devices attached at runtime may not be mounted automatically and must be mounted manually. Manually mounting a file system allows you to make decisions about that file system, for example, B. where the mount point is and whether the file system should be read-only or read-only.
How to mount and unmount drives in Linux
Mount drives in Linux
To mount drives on Linux, you need to use the “mount” command using the following syntax
-
- $ sudo mount
- $ sudo mount
First of all, you need to check the already created disk partitions on your system which are not mounted yet. To list partitions with file system types, use the “lsblk” command with the “-f” option.
-
- $ lsblk -f
- NAME FSTYPE TAG UUID MOUNT POINT
- sda
- ├─sda1 ext4 0935df16-40b0-4850-9d47-47cd2daf6e59
- sdb
- ├─sdb1 ext4 b9df59e6-c806-4851-befa-12402bca5828 /
Alternatively, you can use the “blkid” command to locate and list blocking devices on your system. Unfortunately, this command does not display the current mount points used by your drives.
-
- /dev/sda1: TYPE=”ext4″ PARTUUID=”0935df16-40b0-4850-9d47-47cd2daf6e59″
- /dev/sdb1: UUID=”b9df59e6-c806-4851-befa-12402bca5828″ TYPE=”ext4″ PARTUUID=”269f8db7-90b7-4ebe-acf4-521d6dc2eadb”
In this case, we want to mount the “sda1” partition on our file system. To mount the “sda1” partition, use the “mount” command and specify the directory where you want it to be mounted (in this case, to a directory named “mountpoint” in your home directory.
-
- $ sudo mount /dev/sda1 ~/mount point
If you didn’t get any error message in the process, it means your drive partition was mounted successfully.
Check mounted drives in Linux
To verify that your drive partition was mounted correctly, you can use “lsblk” and inspect the mount point column.
-
- $ lsblk -f
- NAME FSTYPE TAG UUID MOUNT POINT
- sda
- ├─sda1 ext4 0935df16-40b0-4850-9d47-47cd2daf6e59 /boot/user/mountpoint
- sdb
- ├─sdb1 ext4 b9df59e6-c806-4851-befa-12402bca5828 /
Your drive partition was successfully mounted at the mount point, however there is a small issue you need to be aware of when mounting the drives. Using the “mount” command does not make your mounts permanent: you must add them to the fstab file to make them permanent.
Mount drives permanently using fstab
The “fstab” file is a very important file on your file system. Fstab stores static information about file systems, mount points, and various options you may want to set. To list permanently mounted partitions on Linux, use the “cat” command on the fstab file located at /etc.
-
- $ cat /etc/fstab
- # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
- #
- # Use ‘blkid’ to print the universally unique identifier for a
- # device; this can be used with UUID= as a more robust way of naming devices
- # which works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
- #
- #
- UUID=b9df59e6-c806/ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
The fstab contains several columns:
- File system: You can specify a UUID (for a universally unique identifier), a label (if you choose a label for your disk), a network ID, or a device name (which is strongly discouraged);
- Mountpoint: the directory on the file system that you will use to access data stored on the disk;
- File system type: the type of file system you use to format your disk;
- Options: some options you can specify to fine-tune your mount (“ro” for a read-only mount or “noexec” to prevent binary execution);
- Dump – to enable or disable dumping of the file system on the system (using the dump command);
- Pass Num – Sets the order used for the “fsck” utility to check your file system. If you are not mounting the root device, you must set this option to “2” or “0”, since “1” is reserved for the root device.
As you can see here, in addition to mounting the “sda1” partition in the previous section, only the partition with the UUID shown above would be mounted. To get the partition associated with this UUID, you can use the “blkid” command as follows.
Given the UUID of the fstab file, this would give us
-
- $ child | grepb9df
- /dev/sdb1: UUID=”b9df59e6″
Using the blkid command, I can tell that the “sdb1” partition is mounted at boot time. However, in this case, I need the “sda1” partition to be mounted on boot.
Unmount drives on Linux using umount
On Linux, the easiest way to unmount drives on Linux is to use the “unmount” command. To unmount, you can specify a directory or device name.
-
- $ sudo umount
- $ sudo umount
For example, to unmount the device “/dev/sdc1” that we mounted earlier, we would run
To verify that the drive partition was successfully unmounted, you can use the “lsblk” command and specify the drive partition name.
-
- $ lsblk /dev/sdc1
- MAJ NAME:MIN RM RO SIZE MOUNTING POINT TYPE
- sdc1 8:33 0 29.3G 0 part
Alternatively, you can use the “findmnt” command and specify the device name.
-
- $ findmnt /dev/sdc1
Removing fstab file entries
Even if you unmount the drives, they will be remounted (or at least the kernel will try to remount them) at boot time. To stop the system from remounting your drives on boot, you must remove them from the fstab file.
Lazily unmount drives
On Linux, it is also possible to lazily unmount drives with the “-l” option.
-
- $ sudo umount -l
- $ sudo umount -l
Lazily unmounting a device means that it detaches the filesystem from the file hierarchy (so the filesystem will no longer be accessible), but cleans up all references to it when it’s no longer busy. This command can be particularly useful if you are transferring files on the file system or if long operations are running on the file system.
Force unmount the drive
On the other hand, it is possible to force a device to be unmounted using the “-f” option or the “–force” option.
-
- $ sudo umount –force
- $ sudo umount –force
This option is not suitable for local drives, as you want them to be properly unmounted so you don’t lose any data. However, in some cases, you may lose connectivity to an NFS drive, for example: in this case, you can force unmount the drive.
Final words: How to Mount and Unmount Drives on Linux
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