Page 151 - DCAP106_OPERATING_SYSTEM_TOOLS

Operating System Tools

Notes | | +- Movies/
| | +- Music/
| | +- Pictures/ <-- You are here
| | | `- Backgrounds/
| | `- opentasks.txt
| +- jane/
| `- jack/
+- lib/
+- ...
`- var/
Before we explain the various locations, let’s first consider how the file system is stored on one
(or more) media.

9.2.1 Mounting File Systems

The root of a file system is mostly stored on a partition of a disk. In many cases you would want
to combine multiple partitions for a single file system. Combining one partition with the file
system is known as mounting a file system. Your file system is always seen as a tree structure,
however parts of a tree (a branch) can be located on a different partition, disk or even other
medium (network storage, USB stick , DVD, etc).

Mounting

Let us suppose that the root of your file system is stored on one partition and the files of all
the users are stored on another. This would signify that /, and everything below it, is on one
partition except /home and everything below that, which is on a second one.

Example: Figure 9.1 show the two partitions used for the file system structure.

Figure 9.1: Two Partitions Used for the File System Structure

Source: http://swift.siphos.be/linux_sea/linuxfs.html
In case of mounting, you are required to identify a location of the file system as being a mount
point (in Figure 9.1, /home is the mount point) under which each file is actually stored on a
different location (in Figure 9.1, everything below /home is on the second partition). The partition
you “mount” to the file system doesn’t need to know where it is mounted on. In fact, it doesn’t.

144 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY