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I just mounted sda2 to /mnt. How can I force a refresh of fstab so it can pickup the changes and insert a new line for sda2-/mnt?

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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user53029
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2 Answers2

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Linux definitely does provide the tools to do this automatically. Rather than using mount, you should be using findmnt.

man mount 2>/dev/null | 
grep -m1 -B1 findmnt

              For  more robust and customizable output use
              findmnt(8),  especially  in  your   scripts.

printf '%s%s 0 0\n' '/dev/disk/by-uuid/' \
    "$(findmnt -n -o UUID,TARGET,FSTYPE,OPTIONS /mnt)" |
sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

P.S. You'll want to have a look at man fstab for information about the 0 0 bit on the end there. They're related to freq and pass respectively. Whether or not their values above will suit you I cannot say. I can say that those are also output options available with findmnt - but asking it to report on them would make no sense for a disk that isn't already in /etc/fstab. You might also want to reconsider /mnt as the permanent mount point for your new /etc/fstab entry.

mikeserv
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0

You need to manually edit the file fstab. To find out what to put in there, issue the mount command and look at its output.

Jan
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  • ok thanks. hard to believe Linux does not do this own its own. Side note - my sda1 in fstab has the UUID listed. If I run blkid I have a UUID for sda2 as well but when I run mount the only output is "/dev/sda2 /mnt ext3 rw 0 0" - will this do it or do I need to use the UUID as well in fstab? – user53029 Aug 30 '14 at 11:25
  • It is always preferable to use the filesystem's UUID in /etc/fstab because device filenames like /dev/sda2 might change if you repartition the disk, add or remove a disk. – uloBasEI Aug 30 '14 at 11:45