an easy question about mount points...

[cotfessi]

I have a few question regarding mount points. Here is what I have:

hde1 / - 10mb
hde2 /swap - 512mb
hde3 /root - 300mb
hde5 /var - 1000mb
hde6 /home - 3000mb
hde7 /usr - 12000mb

hdg1 /u01 - 3000mb
hdg2 /vol01 - 17000mb


1. So where does the something like the /etc directory live?

2. if I make a new directory, say /newdir01 where will it live? Do I have a say as to what partition it is placed without actually making it a subfolder under that partition's mount point?

Thanks
-cotfessi

[LoRdMaUL]

If your distribution conforms to the file system standard.../etc will be located on the root partition. If you are logged in as a user...say Joe for instance. When you log in and get a shell prompt...you are in /home/joe. Type "cd .." -minus the quotes- twice get back to the root. Now type "ls" -minus the quotes" to list the contents of the root. You should see several directories including root, etc, var, dev, etc. As far as making a new mount point, su to root, and then decide where you want to create the mount point. Redhat, for instance, has a directory on the root called mnt and inside here are floppy and cdrom. This is where a floppy disk and cdrom are mounted respectively. If you have another drive you want to mount in this mnt directory..simply make a new directory with "mkdir <dir name>"..for instance "mkdir windows". Now you need to decide if you want this mounted at boot or mounted only when you need it. An example would be if you wanted to mount a vfat partition when needed. The command syntax is "mount -t vfat <device> <mount point>"...minus the quotes of course. Now for sake of argument lets say that /dev/hda1 is the drive you want to mount. As root, issue "mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows" and press enter. Now cd in /mnt/windows and you should see all the files from the windows partition. If you decide that you want this filesystem mounted at boot...cd into /etc and edit the fstab file...following the syntax there and adjust where needed. I hope this helps a bit.

[cotfessi]

my question was more about where the directory goes vs the actual mounting itself.

what happens if i do the following:

$ su
password
# mkdir /newdir001


given the information in the first post on this thread, on which partition would the directory /newdir001 be placed?

[Tyr-7BE]

/newdir would be on /. If anything new is created which doesn't fall under the other categories (ie, not /var/newdir or something like that), it will be on the root partition.

[Bradmont]

That's one heck of a big swap partition you've got there. It used to be that a swap partition bigger than about 128 megs couldn't be used... is this still the case?